The absurdity of all this will be manifest if we refrain from using a number of terms at once, such as pleasant, painful, good, and bad; and as there appeared to be two things, let us call them by two names—first, good and evil, and then later on, pleasant and painful. Let us then lay it down as our statement, [355c] that a man does evil in spite of knowing the evil of it. Now if someone asks us: Why? we shall answer: Because he is overcome. By what? the questioner will ask us and this time we shall be unable to reply: By pleasure—for this has exchanged its name for “the good.” So we must answer only with the words: Because he is overcome. By what? says the questioner. The good—must surely be our reply. Now if our questioner chance to be an arrogant person he will laugh and exclaim: What a ridiculous statement, [355d] that a man does evil, knowing it to be evil, and not having to do it, because he is overcome by the good! Is this, he will ask, because the good is not worthy of conquering the evil in you, or because it is worthy?
Clearly we must reply: Because it is not worthy; otherwise he whom we speak of as overcome by pleasures would not have offended. But in what sense, he might ask us, is the good unworthy of the bad, or the bad of the good? This can only be when the one is greater and the other smaller, or when there are more on the one side and fewer on the other. We shall not find [355e] any other reason to give; So it is clear, he will say, that by “being overcome” you mean getting the greater evil in exchange for the lesser good. That must be agreed. Then let us apply the terms “pleasant” and “painful”
to these things instead, and say that a man does what we previously called evil, but now call painful, knowing it to be painful, because he is overcome by the pleasant, which is obviously
