And do
you, like a skilful weigher, put into the balance the pleasures and the
pains, and their nearness and distance, and weigh them, and then say which
outweighs the other. If you weigh pleasures against pleasures, you of
course take the more and greater; or if you weigh pains against pains, you
take the fewer and the less; or if pleasures against pains, then you choose
that course of action in which the painful is exceeded by the pleasant,
whether the distant by the near or the near by the distant; and you avoid
that course of action in which the pleasant is exceeded by the painful.
Would you not admit, my friends, that this is true? I am confident that
they cannot deny this.
He agreed with me.
Well then, I shall say, if you agree so far, be so good as to answer me a
question: Do not the same magnitudes appear larger to your sight when
near, and smaller when at a distance? They will acknowledge that. And the
same holds of thickness and number; also sounds, which are in themselves
equal, are greater when near, and lesser when at a distance. They will
grant that also. Now suppose happiness to consist in doing or choosing the
greater, and in not doing or in avoiding the less, what would be the saving
principle of human life? Would not the art of measuring be the saving
principle; or would the power of appearance? Is not the latter that
deceiving art which makes us wander up and down and take the things at one
time of which we repent at another, both in our actions and in our choice
of things great and small? But the art of measurement would do away with
the effect of appearances, and, showing the truth, would fain teach the
soul at last to find rest in the truth, and would thus save our life.
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