Protarchus: Quite so.
Socrates: And can opinions be good or bad except in as far as they are true or false?
Protarchus: In no other way.
Socrates: Nor can pleasures be conceived to be bad except in so far as they are false.
Protarchus: Nay, Socrates, that is the very opposite of truth; for no one would call pleasures and pains bad because they are false, but by reason of some other great corruption to which they are liable.
Socrates: Well, of pleasures which are corrupt and caused by corruption we will hereafter speak, if we care to continue the enquiry; for the present I would rather show by another argument that there are many false pleasures existing or coming into existence in us, because this may assist our final decision.
Protarchus: Very true; that is to say, if there are such pleasures.
Socrates: I think that there are, Protarchus; but this is an opinion which should be well assured, and not rest upon a mere assertion.
Protarchus: Very good.
Socrates: Then now, like wrestlers, let us approach and grasp this new argument.
Protarchus: Proceed.
Socrates: We were maintaining a little while since, that when desires, as they are termed, exist in us, then the body has separate feelings apart from the soul—do you remember?
Protarchus: Yes, I remember that you said so.
Socrates: And the soul was supposed to desire the opposite of the bodily state, while the body was the source of any pleasure or pain which was experienced.
Protarchus: True.
Socrates: Then now you may infer what happens in such cases.
Protarchus: What am I to infer?
Socrates: That in such cases pleasures and pains come simultaneously; and there is a juxtaposition of the opposite sensations which correspond to them, as has been already shown.
Protarchus: Clearly.
Socrates: And there is another point to which we have agreed.
Protarchus: What is it?
Socrates: That pleasure and pain both admit of more and less, and that they are of the class of infinites.
Protarchus: Certainly, we said so.
Socrates: But how can we rightly judge of them?
Protarchus: How can we?