[583c]
“if you
will answer my questions while I seek.” “Ask,
then,” he said. “Tell me, then,” said I,
“do we not say that pain is the opposite of pleasure?”
“We certainly do.” “And is there not such a
thing as a neutral state1” “There is.” “Is it not
intermediate between them, and in the mean,2 being a kind of quietude of the soul
in these respects? Or is not that your notion of it?”
“It is that,” said he. “Do you not recall the
things men say in sickness?” “What sort of
things?” “Why, that after all there is nothing sweeter
than to be well,3
1 If any inference could he drawn from the fact that in the Philebus 42 D ff. and 32 E the reality of the neutral state has to be proved, it would be that the Philebus is earlier, which it is not.
2 For ἐν μέσῳ Cf. Phileb. 35 E.
3 Cf. perhaps Phileb. 45 B, Aristot.Eth. Nic. 1095 a 24, and Heracleit.fr. 111, Diels i.3 p. 99νοῦσος ὑγιείην ἐποίησεν ἡδύ.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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