truest and purest knowledge.

(7) We are now able to determine the composition of the perfect life.
First, we admit the pure pleasures and the pure sciences; secondly, the
impure sciences, but not the impure pleasures. We have next to discover
what element of goodness is contained in this mixture. There are three
criteria of goodness--beauty, symmetry, truth. These are clearly more akin
to reason than to pleasure, and will enable us to fix the places of both of
them in the scale of good. First in the scale is measure; the second place
is assigned to symmetry; the third, to reason and wisdom; the fourth, to
knowledge and true opinion; the fifth, to pure pleasures; and here the Muse
says 'Enough.'

'Bidding farewell to Philebus and Socrates,' we may now consider the
metaphysical conceptions which are presented to us. These are (I) the
paradox of unity and plurality; (II) the table of categories or elements;
(III) the kinds of pleasure; (IV) the kinds of knowledge; (V) the
conception of the good. We may then proceed to examine (VI) the relation
of the Philebus to the Republic, and to other dialogues.

I. The paradox of the one and many originated in the restless dialectic of
Zeno, who sought to prove the absolute existence of the one by showing the
contradictions that are involved in admitting the existence of the many
(compare Parm.). Zeno illustrated the contradiction by well-known examples
taken from outward objects. But Socrates seems to intimate that the time
had arrived for discarding these hackneyed illustrations; such difficulties
had long been solved by common sense ('solvitur ambulando'); the fact of
the co-existence of opposites was a sufficient answer to them. He will
leave them to Cynics and Eristics; the youth of Athens may discourse of
them to their parents. To no rational man could the circumstance that the