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[352e] or under the control of one of the things I have just mentioned.

Yes, Socrates, he replied, I regard this as but one of the many erroneous sayings of mankind.

Come then, and join me in the endeavor to persuade the world and explain what is this experience of theirs, which they call “being overcome by pleasure,” and which they give as the reason why they fail to do what is best though they have knowledge of it. For perhaps if we said to them: What you assert, good people, is not correct, but quite untrue—they might ask us: Protagoras and Socrates, if this experience is not “being overcome by pleasure”


Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 3 translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967.

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