Fine and shameful
SocratesI understand: it seems you don’t consider the fine and the good the same, nor the evil and the shameful.
PolusCertainly not.
SocratesAnd what about this? All fine things—bodies, for instance, colours, shapes, sounds, pursuits—do you call them fine each time without looking to anything? For instance, to begin with bodies: fine bodies—don’t you say they are fine either by their use, for whatever each is useful for, or by some pleasure, if in being looked at they gladden those who look at them? Have you anything beyond these to say about the beauty of a body?
PolusI haven’t.
SocratesThen don’t you also call all the rest fine in this way, shapes and colours alike: either because of some pleasure, or because of benefit, or because of both?
PolusI do.
SocratesAnd isn’t it the same with sounds, and with everything that belongs to music?
PolusYes.
SocratesAnd surely the fine things that have to do with the laws, at least, and the fine pursuits don’t lie outside these, I imagine: being beneficial or pleasant or both.
PolusI don’t think so.
SocratesThen isn’t it the same with the beauty of the things we learn, too?
PolusCertainly. And now you define it finely, Socrates, defining the fine by pleasure and good.
SocratesAnd the shameful by the opposite, by pain and evil?
PolusNecessarily.
SocratesSo when, of two fine things, one is finer, it is finer by exceeding in one of these two or in both: either in pleasure, or in benefit, or in both.
PolusCertainly.
SocratesAnd again, when, of two shameful things, one is more shameful, it will be more shameful by exceeding either in pain or in evil. Or isn’t that necessary?
PolusYes.