Note 136 — Chapter XXXII · PHILEBUS.

See the pseudo-Platonic dialogue Axiochus, pp. 366-367. Compare Republic, vii. 526 C, vi. 504 C.

The Sokratic method, in creating consciousness of ignorance, is exhibited not less in the Xenophontic Memorabilia (iv. 2, 40) than in various Platonic dialogues, Alkibiades I., Theætêtus, &c. We read it formally proclaimed by Sokrates in the Platonic Apology.

Aristotle repeats the assertion contained in the Philêbus about the list of painless pleasures — ἄλυποι γάρ εἰσιν αἵ τε μαθηματικαὶ, &c. (Ethic. Nikom. x. 2, 1173, b. 16; 7, 1177, a. 25.) He himself says in another place (vii. 13, 1153, a. 20) that τὸ θεωρεῖν sometimes hurts the health, and if he had examined the lives of mathematicians, especially that of Kepler, he would hardly have imagined that mathematical investigations have no pains attached to them. He probably means that they are not preceded by painful appetites such as hunger and thirst. But they are preceded by acquired impulses or desires, which in reference to the present question are upon same footing as the natural appetites. A healthy and temperate man, leading a regular life and in easy circumstances, knows little of hunger and thirst as pains: he knows them only as appetites which give relish to his periodical meals. It is only when this periodical satisfaction is withheld that his appetite grows to a painful and distressing height. So too the φιλομαθής; his appetite for study, when regularly gratified to an extent consistent with health and other considerations, is not painful; but it will rise to the height of a most distressing privation if he be debarred from gratifying it, excluded from books and papers, disturbed by noises and intrusions. Kepler, if interdicted from pursuing his calculations, would have been miserable. Jason of Pheræ was heard to say that he felt hungry so long as he was not in possession of supreme power — πεινῇν, ὅτε μὴ τυραννοῖ, Aristot. Politic. iii. 4, 1277, a. 24; thus intimating that the acquired appetite of ambition had in his mind reached the same intensity as the natural appetite of hunger.