at is it?

SOCRATES: Whether we experience the feeling of which I am speaking only
in relation to the present and the past, or in relation to the future
also?

PROTARCHUS: I should say in relation to all times alike.

SOCRATES: Have not purely mental pleasures and pains been described
already as in some cases anticipations of the bodily ones; from which
we may infer that anticipatory pleasures and pains have to do with the
future?

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: And do all those writings and paintings which, as we were
saying a little while ago, are produced in us, relate to the past and
present only, and not to the future?

PROTARCHUS: To the future, very much.

SOCRATES: When you say, 'Very much,' you mean to imply that all these
representations are hopes about the future, and that mankind are filled
with hopes in every stage of existence?

PROTARCHUS: Exactly.

SOCRATES: Answer me another question.

PROTARCHUS: What question?

SOCRATES: A just and pious and good man is the friend of the gods; is he
not?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly he is.

SOCRATES: And the unjust and utterly bad man is the reverse?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And all men, as we were saying just now, are always filled
with hopes?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And these hopes, as they are termed, are propositions which
exist in the minds of each of us?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the fancies of hope are also pictured in us; a man may
often have a vision of a heap of gold, and pleasures ensuing, and in the
picture there may be a likeness of himself mightily rejoicing over his
good fortune.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And may we not say that the good, being friends of the gods,
have generally true pictures presented to them, and the bad false
pictures?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: The bad, too, have pleasures painted in their fancy as well as
the good; but I presume that they are false pleasures.

PROTARCHUS: They are.

SOCRATES: The bad then commonly delight in false pleasures, and the good
in true pleasures?

PROTARCHUS: Doubtless.

SOCRATES: Then upon this view there are false pleasures in the souls of
men which are a ludicrous imitation of the true, and there are pains of
a similar character?

PROTARCHUS: There are.

SOCRATES: And did we not allow that a man who had an opinion at all had
a real opinion, but often about things which had no existence either in
the past, present, or future?