[354c]
with respect to which you call them good, apart from pleasures and pains? They could not find one, I fancy.
I too think they could not, said Protagoras.
Then do you pursue pleasure as being a good thing, and shun pain as being a bad one?
He agreed that we do.
So one thing you hold to be bad—pain; and pleasure you hold to be good, since the very act of enjoying you call bad as soon as it deprives us of greater pleasures than it has in itself, or leads to greater pains than the pleasures it contains.