the beautiful in external things.

7. Plato agrees partially with certain 'surly or fastidious'
philosophers, as he terms them, who defined pleasure to be the absence
of pain. They are also described as eminent in physics. There is
unfortunately no school of Greek philosophy known to us which combined
these two characteristics. Antisthenes, who was an enemy of pleasure,
was not a physical philosopher; the atomists, who were physical
philosophers, were not enemies of pleasure. Yet such a combination of
opinions is far from being impossible. Plato's omission to mention them
by name has created the same uncertainty respecting them which also
occurs respecting the 'friends of the ideas' and the 'materialists' in
the Sophist.

On the whole, this discussion is one of the least satisfactory in the
dialogues of Plato. While the ethical nature of pleasure is scarcely
considered, and the merely physical phenomenon imperfectly analysed,
too much weight is given to ideas of measure and number, as the sole
principle of good. The comparison of pleasure and knowledge is really
a comparison of two elements, which have no common measure, and which
cannot be excluded from each other. Feeling is not opposed to knowledge,
and in all consciousness there is an element of both. The most abstract
kinds of knowledge are inseparable from some pleasure or pain, which
accompanies the acquisition or possession of them: the student is liable
to grow weary of them, and soon discovers that continuous mental energy
is not granted to men. The most sensual pleasure, on the other hand, is
inseparable from the consciousness of pleasure; no man can be happy who,
to borrow Plato's illustration, is leading the life of an oyster. Hence
(by his own confession) the main thesis is not worth determining; the
real interest lies in the incidental discussion. We can no more separate
pleasure from knowledge in the Philebus than we can separate justice
from happiness in the Republic.

IV. An interesting account is given in the Philebus of the rank and
order of the sciences or arts, which agrees generally with the scheme
of knowledge in the Sixth Book of the Republic. The chief difference is,
that the position of the arts is more exactly defined. They are divided
into an empirical part and a scientific part, of which the first is mere
guess-work, the second is determined by rule and measure. Of the more
empirical arts, music is given as an example; this, although affi