that the human voice was infinite, first
distinguished in this infinity a certain number of vowels, and then
other letters which had sound, but were not pure vowels (i.e., the
semivowels); these too exist in a definite number; and lastly, he
distinguished a third class of letters which we now call mutes, without
voice and without sound, and divided these, and likewise the two other
classes of vowels and semivowels, into the individual sounds, and
told the number of them, and gave to each and all of them the name of
letters; and observing that none of us could learn any one of them and
not learn them all, and in consideration of this common bond which in
a manner united them, he assigned to them all a single art, and this he
called the art of grammar or letters.

PHILEBUS: The illustration, Protarchus, has assisted me in understanding
the original statement, but I still feel the defect of which I just now
complained.

SOCRATES: Are you going to ask, Philebus, what this has to do with the
argument?

PHILEBUS: Yes, that is a question which Protarchus and I have been long
asking.

SOCRATES: Assuredly you have already arrived at the answer to the
question which, as you say, you have been so long asking?

PHILEBUS: How so?

SOCRATES: Did we not begin by enquiring into the comparative eligibility
of pleasure and wisdom?

PHILEBUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And we maintain that they are each of them one?

PHILEBUS: True.

SOCRATES: And the precise question to which the previous discussion
desires an answer is, how they are one and also many (i.e., how they
have one genus and many species), and are not at once infinite, and what
number of species is to be assigned to either of them before they pass
into infinity (i.e. into the infinite number of individuals).

PROTARCHUS: That is a very serious question, Philebus, to which Socrates
has ingeniously brought us round, and please to consider which of us
shall answer him; there may be something ridiculous in my being unable
to answer, and therefore imposing the task upon you, when I have
undertaken the whole charge of the argument, but if neither of us were
able to answer, the result methinks would be still more ridiculous. Let
us consider, then, what we are to do:--Socrates, if I understood him
rightly, is asking whether there are not kinds of pleasure, and what is
the number and nature of them, and the same of wisdom.

SOCRATES: Most true, O son of Callias; and the pre