yourself. Whether the words are actually spoken or not, on such occasions
there is a scribe within who registers them, and a painter who paints the
images of the things which the scribe has written down in the soul,--at
least that is my own notion of the process; and the words and images which
are inscribed by them may be either true or false; and they may represent
either past, present, or future. And, representing the future, they must
also represent the pleasures and pains of anticipation--the visions of gold
and other fancies which are never wanting in the mind of man. Now these
hopes, as they are termed, are propositions, which are sometimes true, and
sometimes false; for the good, who are the friends of the gods, see true
pictures of the future, and the bad false ones. And as there may be
opinion about things which are not, were not, and will not be, which is
opinion still, so there may be pleasure about things which are not, were
not, and will not be, which is pleasure still,--that is to say, false
pleasure; and only when false, can pleasure, like opinion, be vicious.
Against this conclusion Protarchus reclaims.

Leaving his denial for the present, Socrates proceeds to show that some
pleasures are false from another point of view. In desire, as we admitted,
the body is divided from the soul, and hence pleasures and pains are often
simultaneous. And we further admitted that both of them belonged to the
infinite class. How, then, can we compare them? Are we not liable, or
rather certain, as in the case of sight, to be deceived by distance and
relation? In this case the pleasures and pains are not false because based
upon false opinion, but are themselves false. And there is another
illusion: pain has often been said by us to arise out of the derangement--
pleasure out of the restoration--of our nature. But in passing from one to
the other, do we not experience neutral states, which although they appear
pleasureable or painful are really neither? For even if we admit, with the
wise man whom Protarchus loves (and only a wise man could have ever