should have a principle of choice. He did not
intend to oppose 'the useful' to some higher conception, such as the
Platonic ideal, but to chance and caprice. The Platonic Socrates pursues
the same vein of thought in the Protagoras, where he argues against the
so-called sophist that pleasure and pain are the final standards and
motives of good and evil, and that the salvation of human life depends
upon a right estimate of pleasures greater or less when seen near and
at a distance. The testimony of Xenophon is thus confirmed by that of
Plato, and we are therefore justified in calling Socrates the first
utilitarian; as indeed there is no side or aspect of philosophy which
may not with reason be ascribed to him--he is Cynic and Cyrenaic,
Platonist and Aristotelian in one. But in the Phaedo the Socratic has
already passed into a more ideal point of view; and he, or rather
Plato speaking in his person, expressly repudiates the notion that the
exchange of a less pleasure for a greater can be an exchange of virtue.
Such virtue is the virtue of ordinary men who live in the world of
appearance; they are temperate only that they may enjoy the pleasures
of intemperance, and courageous from fear of danger. Whereas the
philosopher is seeking after wisdom and not after pleasure, whether near
or distant: he is the mystic, the initiated, who has learnt to despise
the body and is yearning all his life long for a truth which will
hereafter be revealed to him. In the Republic the pleasures of knowledge
are affirmed to be superior to other pleasures, because the philosopher
so estimates them; and he alone has had experience of both kinds.
(Compare a similar argument urged by one of the latest defenders of
Utilitarianism, Mill's Utilitarianism). In the Philebus, Plato, although
he regards the enemies of pleasure with complacency, still further
modifies the transcendentalism of the Phaedo. For he is compelled to
confess, rather reluctantly, perhaps, that some pleasures, i.e. those
which have no antecedent pains, claim a place in the scale of goods.

There have been many reasons why not only Plato but mankind in general
have been unwilling to acknowledge that 'pleasure is the chief good.'
Either they have heard a voice calling to them out of another world; or
the life and example of some great teacher has cast their thoughts
of right and wrong in another mould; or the word 'pleasure' has been
associated in their mind with merely animal enjoymen