to an
incorporeal law, which is going to hold fair rule over a living body.

PROTARCHUS: I agree with you, Socrates.

SOCRATES: And may we not say with reason that we are now at the
vestibule of the habitation of the good?

PROTARCHUS: I think that we are.

SOCRATES: What, then, is there in the mixture which is most precious,
and which is the principal cause why such a state is universally beloved
by all? When we have discovered it, we will proceed to ask whether this
omnipresent nature is more akin to pleasure or to mind.

PROTARCHUS: Quite right; in that way we shall be better able to judge.

SOCRATES: And there is no difficulty in seeing the cause which renders
any mixture either of the highest value or of none at all.

PROTARCHUS: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: Every man knows it.

PROTARCHUS: What?

SOCRATES: He knows that any want of measure and symmetry in any mixture
whatever must always of necessity be fatal, both to the elements and
to the mixture, which is then not a mixture, but only a confused medley
which brings confusion on the possessor of it.

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: And now the power of the good has retired into the region of
the beautiful; for measure and symmetry are beauty and virtue all the
world over.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: Also we said that truth was to form an element in the mixture.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: Then, if we are not able to hunt the good with one idea only,
with three we may catch our prey; Beauty, Symmetry, Truth are the
three, and these taken together we may regard as the single cause of
the mixture, and the mixture as being good by reason of the infusion of
them.

PROTARCHUS: Quite right.

SOCRATES: And now, Protarchus, any man could decide well enough whether
pleasure or wisdom is more akin to the highest good, and more honourable
among gods and men.

PROTARCHUS: Clearly, and yet perhaps the argument had better be pursued
to the end.

SOCRATES: We must take each of them separately in their relation to
pleasure and mind, and pronounce upon them; for we ought to see to which
of the two they are severally most akin.

PROTARCHUS: You are speaking of beauty, truth, and measure?

SOCRATES: Yes, Protarchus, take truth first, and, after passing
in review mind, truth, pleasure, pause awhile and make answer to
yourself--as to whether pleasure or mind is more akin to truth.

PROTARCHUS: There is no need to pause, for the difference be