he courageous and the confident in a fluent
speech.

Socrates renews the attack from another side: he would like to
know whether pleasure is not the only good, and pain the only evil?
Protagoras seems to doubt the morality or propriety of assenting to
this; he would rather say that 'some pleasures are good, some pains are
evil,' which is also the opinion of the generality of mankind. What
does he think of knowledge? Does he agree with the common opinion that
knowledge is overcome by passion? or does he hold that knowledge is
power? Protagoras agrees that knowledge is certainly a governing power.

This, however, is not the doctrine of men in general, who maintain that
many who know what is best, act contrary to their knowledge under the
influence of pleasure. But this opposition of good and evil is really
the opposition of a greater or lesser amount of pleasure. Pleasures are
evils because they end in pain, and pains are goods because they end in
pleasures. Thus pleasure is seen to be the only good; and the only evil
is the preference of the lesser pleasure to the greater. But then comes
in the illusion of distance. Some art of mensuration is required in
order to show us pleasures and pains in their true proportion. This art
of mensuration is a kind of knowledge, and knowledge is thus proved
once more to be the governing principle of human life, and ignorance the
origin of all evil: for no one prefers the less pleasure to the greater,
or the greater pain to the less, except from ignorance. The argument
is drawn out in an imaginary 'dialogue within a dialogue,' conducted by
Socrates and Protagoras on the one part, and the rest of the world
on the other. Hippias and Prodicus, as well as Protagoras, admit the
soundness of the conclusion.

Socrates then applies this new conclusion to the case of courage--the
only virtue which still holds out against the assaults of the Socratic
dialectic. No one chooses the evil or refuses the good except through
ignorance. This explains why cowards refuse to go to war:--because they
form a wrong estimate of good, and honour, and pleasure. And why are the
courageous willing to go to war?--because they form a right estimate of
pleasures and pains, of things terrible and not terrible. Courage then
is knowledge, and cowardice is ignorance. And the five virtues, which
were originally maintained to have five different natures, after having
been easily reduced to two only, at last coalesce in on