THE PLATONIC SUBORDINATION OF LOWER TO HIGHER
Epicureanism tells us how to gain pleasure; Stoicism tells us how to bear pain. But life is not so simple as these systems assume. It is not merely the problem of getting all the pleasure we can; nor of taking pain in such wise that it does not hurt. It is a question of the worth of the things in which we find our pleasure, and the relative values of the things we suffer for. Plato squarely attacks that larger problem. He says that the Epicurean is like a musician who tunes his violin as much as he can without breaking the strings. The wise musician, on the contrary, recognises that the tuning is merely incidental to the music; and that when you have tuned it up to a certain point, it is worse than useless to go on tuning it any more. Just as the tuning is for the sake of the music, and when you have reached a point where the instrument gives perfect music, you must stop the tuning and begin to play; so when you have brought any particular pleasure, say that of eating, up to a certain point, you must stop eating, and begin to live the life for the sake of which you eat. To the Stoic Plato gives a similar answer. The Stoic, he says, is like a physician who gives his patient all the medicine he can, and prides himself on being a better physician than others because he gives his patients bigger doses, and more of them. The wise physician gives medicine up to a certain point, and then stops. That point is determined by the health, which the medicine is given to promote. Precisely so, it is foolish to bear all the pain we can, and boast ourselves of our ability to swallow big doses of tribulation and pronounce it good. The wise man will bear pain up to a certain point; and when he reaches that limit, he will stop. What is the point? Where is the limit? Virtue is the point up to which the bearing of pain is good, the limit beyond which the bearing of pain becomes an evil. Virtue, then, is the supreme good, and makes everything that furthers it, whether pleasurable or painful, good. Virtue makes everything that hinders it, whether pleasurable or painful, bad. What, then, is virtue? In what does this priceless pearl consist? We have our two analogies. Virtue is to pleasure what the music is to the tuning of the instrument. Just as the perfection of the music proves the excellence of the tuning, so the perfection of virtue justifies the particular pleasures we enjoy. Virtue stands related to the endurance of pain, as health stands related to the taking of medicine. The perfection of health proves that, however distasteful the medicine may be, it is nevertheless good; and any imperfection of health that may result from either too much or too little medicine shows that in the quantity taken the medicine was bad for us. Precisely so pain is good for us up to the point where virtue requires it. Below or above that point, pain becomes an evil.
