em is rest;
but if so, how can the absence of either of them be the other? Thus
we are led to infer that the contradiction is an appearance only, and
witchery of the senses. And these are not the only pleasures, for there
are others which have no preceding pains. Pure pleasure then is not the
absence of pain, nor pure pain the absence of pleasure; although most of
the pleasures which reach the mind through the body are reliefs of
pain, and have not only their reactions when they depart, but their
anticipations before they come. They can be best described in a simile.
There is in nature an upper, lower, and middle region, and he who passes
from the lower to the middle imagines that he is going up and is already
in the upper world; and if he were taken back again would think,
and truly think, that he was descending. All this arises out of his
ignorance of the true upper, middle, and lower regions. And a like
confusion happens with pleasure and pain, and with many other things.
The man who compares grey with black, calls grey white; and the man who
compares absence of pain with pain, calls the absence of pain pleasure.
Again, hunger and thirst are inanitions of the body, ignorance and folly
of the soul; and food is the satisfaction of the one, knowledge of the
other. Now which is the purer satisfaction--that of eating and drinking,
or that of knowledge? Consider the matter thus: The satisfaction of
that which has more existence is truer than of that which has less. The
invariable and immortal has a more real existence than the variable
and mortal, and has a corresponding measure of knowledge and truth. The
soul, again, has more existence and truth and knowledge than the body,
and is therefore more really satisfied and has a more natural pleasure.
Those who feast only on earthly food, are always going at random up
to the middle and down again; but they never pass into the true upper
world, or have a taste of true pleasure. They are like fatted beasts,
full of gluttony and sensuality, and ready to kill one another by reason
of their insatiable lust; for they are not filled with true being, and
their vessel is leaky (Gorgias). Their pleasures are mere shadows of
pleasure, mixed with pain, coloured and intensified by contrast,
and therefore intensely desired; and men go fighting about them, as
Stesichorus says that the Greeks fought about the shadow of Helen at
Troy, because they know not the truth.

The same may be said of th