PHILEBUS.

and arts and true opinions are enumerated in the fourth class. At pp. 50 D and 67 B, we seem to have an intimation of a further discussion, in which some topics lightly passed over were to receive more consideration. The various uses of the word "mixed"—for the mixed life, the mixed class of elements, the mixture of pleasures, or of pleasure and pain—are a further source of perplexity. Our ignorance of the opinions Plato is attacking is also a source of obscurity. Many things in a controversy might seem relevant if we knew what they were intended to refer to. But no conjecture will enable us to supply what Plato has not told us, or to explain, from our fragmentary knowledge, the relation of his doctrine to the Eleatic Being, the Megarian concept of the Good, or the theories of Aristippus or Antisthenes regarding pleasure. Nor are we able to say how far Plato, in the Philebus, conceives of the "finite" and "infinite" (which occur both in the fragments of Philolaus and in the Pythagorean table of opposites) in the same manner as his contemporary Pythagoreans.

There is little in the characters worthy of note. The Socrates of the Philebus is devoid of any touch of Socratic irony, though here, as in the Phaedrus (235 C), he twice attributes the flow of his ideas to a sudden inspiration (20 B, 25 B, C). The interlocutor, Protarchus, the son of Callias, who has been a student of Gorgias (58 A), is supposed to begin as a disciple of the partisans of pleasure, but is soon won over to the opposite side by the arguments of Socrates. The instincts of youth are easily induced to take the better part. Philebus, who has withdrawn from the argument, is brought back several times (pp. 18, 19, 22, 28) to support pleasure, of which he remains the uncompromising advocate until the end. On the other hand, the youthful group of listeners surrounding him, "Philebus' boys" as they are termed, whose presence is several times mentioned (16 A, B, 19 D, 67 B), are all described as finally convinced by the arguments of Socrates. They bear a very faded resemblance to the interested audiences of the Charmides, Lysis, or Protagoras. Aside from the allusion to the anonymous enemies of pleasure (44 B, C) and the teachers of the "flux" (43 A), there are no other signs of relation to external life or mention of contemporary persons.

The omission of the doctrine of "recollection"—that knowledge is a memory of a previous state of existence—is a sign of progress in Plato’s philosophy.