And a like confusion happens with pleasure and pain, and with many other things.
The man who compares grey with black, calls grey white; and the man who compares absence of pain with pain, calls the absence of pain pleasure.
Again, hunger and thirst are inanitions of the body, ignorance and folly of the soul; and food is the satisfaction of the one, knowledge of the other.

Now which is the purer satisfaction--that of eating and drinking, or that of knowledge?
Consider the matter thus: The satisfaction of that which has more existence is truer than of that which has less.

The invariable and immortal has a more real existence than the variable and mortal, and has a corresponding measure of knowledge and truth.

The soul, again, has more existence and truth and knowledge than the body, and is therefore more really satisfied and has a more natural pleasure.
Those who feast only on earthly food, are always going at random up to the middle and down again; but they never pass into the true upper world, or have a taste of true pleasure.

They are like fatted beasts, full of gluttony and sensuality, and ready to kill one another by reason of their insatiable lust; for they are not filled with true being, and their vessel is leaky (Gorgias).