Philebus Part 14

SOCRATES: An object may be often seen at a distance not very clearly, and the seer may want to determine what it is which he sees.

PROTARCHUS: Very likely.

SOCRATES: Soon he begins to interrogate himself.

PROTARCHUS: In what manner?

SOCRATES: He asks himself--'What is that which appears to be standing by the rock under the tree?' This is the question which he may be supposed to put to himself when he sees such an appearance.

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: To which he may guess the right answer, saying as if in a whisper to himself--'It is a man.'

PROTARCHUS: Very good.

SOCRATES: Or again, he may be misled, and then he will say--'No, it is a figure made by the shepherds.'

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And if he has a companion, he repeats his thought to him in articulate sounds, and what was before an opinion, has now become a proposition.

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: But if he be walking alone when these thoughts occur to him, he may not unfrequently keep them in his mind for a considerable time.

PROTARCHUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: Well, now, I wonder whether you would agree in my explanation of this phenomenon.

PROTARCHUS: What is your explanation?

SOCRATES: I think that the soul at such times is like a book.

PROTARCHUS: How so?

SOCRATES: Memory and perception meet, and they and their attendant feelings seem to almost to write down words in the soul, and when the inscribing feeling writes truly, then true opinion and true propositions which are the expressions of opinion come into our souls--but when the scribe within us writes falsely, the result is false.

PROTARCHUS: I quite a.s.sent and agree to your statement.

SOCRATES: I must bespeak your favour also for another artist, who is busy at the same time in the chambers of the soul.

PROTARCHUS: Who is he?

SOCRATES: The painter, who, after the scribe has done his work, draws images in the soul of the things which he has described.

PROTARCHUS: But when and how does he do this?

SOCRATES: When a man, besides receiving from sight or some other sense certain opinions or statements, sees in his mind the images of the subjects of them;--is not this a very common mental phenomenon?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And the images answering to true opinions and words are true, and to false opinions and words false; are they not?

PROTARCHUS: They are.

SOCRATES: If we are right so far, there arises a further question.

PROTARCHUS: What is it?

SOCRATES: Whether we experience the feeling of which I am speaking only in relation to the present and the past, or in relation to the future also?

PROTARCHUS: I should say in relation to all times alike.

SOCRATES: Have not purely mental pleasures and pains been described already as in some cases antic.i.p.ations of the bodily ones; from which we may infer that antic.i.p.atory pleasures and pains have to do with the future?

PROTARCHUS: Most true.

SOCRATES: And do all those writings and paintings which, as we were saying a little while ago, are produced in us, relate to the past and present only, and not to the future?

PROTARCHUS: To the future, very much.

SOCRATES: When you say, 'Very much,' you mean to imply that all these representations are hopes about the future, and that mankind are filled with hopes in every stage of existence?

PROTARCHUS: Exactly.

SOCRATES: Answer me another question.

PROTARCHUS: What question?

SOCRATES: A just and pious and good man is the friend of the G.o.ds; is he not?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly he is.

SOCRATES: And the unjust and utterly bad man is the reverse?

PROTARCHUS: True.

SOCRATES: And all men, as we were saying just now, are always filled with hopes?

PROTARCHUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And these hopes, as they are termed, are propositions which exist in the minds of each of us?

PROTARCHUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And the fancies of hope are also pictured in us; a man may often have a vision of a heap of gold, and pleasures ensuing, and in the picture there may be a likeness of himself mightily rejoicing over his good fortune.

PROTARCHUS: True.