classes, you may leave the further consideration of individuals. But you
must not pass at once either from unity to infinity, or from infinity to
unity. In music, for example, you may begin with the most general notion,
but this alone will not make you a musician: you must know also the number
and nature of the intervals, and the systems which are framed out of them,
and the rhythms of the dance which correspond to them. And when you have a
similar knowledge of any other subject, you may be said to know that
subject. In speech again there are infinite varieties of sound, and some
one who was a wise man, or more than man, comprehended them all in the
classes of mutes, vowels, and semivowels, and gave to each of them a name,
and assigned them to the art of grammar.

'But whither, Socrates, are you going? And what has this to do with the
comparative eligibility of pleasure and wisdom:' Socrates replies, that
before we can adjust their respective claims, we want to know the number
and kinds of both of them. What are they? He is requested to answer the
question himself. That he will, if he may be allowed to make one or two
preliminary remarks. In the first place he has a dreamy recollection of
hearing that neither pleasure nor knowledge is the highest good, for the
good should be perfect and sufficient. But is the life of pleasure perfect
and sufficient, when deprived of memory, consciousness, anticipation? Is
not this the life of an oyster? Or is the life of mind sufficient, if
devoid of any particle of pleasure? Must not the union of the two be
higher and more eligible than either separately? And is not the element
which makes this mixed life eligible more akin to mind than to pleasure?
Thus pleasure is rejected and mind is rejected. And yet there may be a
life of mind, not human but divine, which conquers still.

But, if we are to pursue this argument further, we shall require some new
weapons; and by this, I mean a new classification of existence. (1) There