Pro. How do you mean ?
Soc. Shall I, Protarchus, have my own question asked of me by you ?
Pro. What question ?
Soc. Ask me whether wisdom and science and mind, and those other qualities which I, when asked by you at first what is the nature of the good, affirmed to be good, are not in the same case with the pleasures of which you spoke.
Pro. What do you mean ?
Soc. The sciences are a numerous class, and will be found to present great differences. But even admitting that, like the pleasures, they are opposite as well as different, should I be worthy of the name of dialectician if, in order to avoid this difficulty, I were to say (as you are saying of pleasure) that there is no difference between one science and another ; — would not the argument founder and disappear like an idle tale, although we might ourselves escape drowning by clinging to a fallacy ?
Pro. May none of this befall us, except the deliverance ! Yet I like the even-handed justice which is applied to both our arguments. Let us assume, then, that there are many and diverse pleasures, and many and different sciences.
Soc. And let us have no concealment, Protarchus, of the differences between my good and yours ; but let us bring them to the light in the hope that, in the process of testing them, they may show whether pleasure is to be called the good, or wisdom, or some third quality ; for surely we are not now simply contending in order that my view or that yours may prevail, but I presume that we ought both of us to be fighting for the truth.
Pro. Certainly we ought.