od higher than either pleasure or wisdom,
and then neither of them will gain the first prize, but whichever of the
two is more akin to this higher good will have a right to the second.
They agree, and Socrates opens the game by enlarging on the diversity
and opposition which exists among pleasures. For there are pleasures of
all kinds, good and bad, wise and foolish--pleasures of the temperate as
well as of the intemperate. Protarchus replies that although pleasures
may be opposed in so far as they spring from opposite sources,
nevertheless as pleasures they are alike. Yes, retorts Socrates,
pleasure is like pleasure, as figure is like figure and colour like
colour; yet we all know that there is great variety among figures and
colours. Protarchus does not see the drift of this remark; and Socrates
proceeds to ask how he can have a right to attribute a new predicate
(i.e. 'good') to pleasures in general, when he cannot deny that they are
different? What common property in all of them does he mean to indicate
by the term 'good'? If he continues to assert that there is some trivial
sense in which pleasure is one, Socrates may retort by saying that
knowledge is one, but the result will be that such merely verbal and
trivial conceptions, whether of knowledge or pleasure, will spoil the
discussion, and will prove the incapacity of the two disputants. In
order to avoid this danger, he proposes that they shall beat a retreat,
and, before they proceed, come to an understanding about the 'high
argument' of the one and the many.

Protarchus agrees to the proposal, but he is under the impression that
Socrates means to discuss the common question--how a sensible object can
be one, and yet have opposite attributes, such as 'great' and 'small,'
'light' and 'heavy,' or how there can be many members in one body, and
the like wonders. Socrates has long ceased to see any wonder in these
phenomena; his difficulties begin with the application of number to
abstract unities (e.g.'man,' 'good') and with the attempt to divide
them. For have these unities of idea any real existence? How, if
imperishable, can they enter into the world of generation? How, as
units, can they be divided and dispersed among different objects? Or do
they exist in their entirety in each object? These difficulties are but
imperfectly answered by Socrates in what follows.

We speak of a one and many, which is ever flowing in and out of all
things, concerning which a you