One of the Platonic illustrations, often brought up, is that of the happy oyster. [Footnote:  Philebus, 22.  “Is such a life eligible?” asks Socrates.  Later (40), he agrees that “a man must be admitted to have real pleasure who is pleased with anything or anyhow,” but asks if it is not true that some pleasures are “false.”  Protarchus hits the nail on the head by replying, “No one would call pleasures bad because they are ‘false,’ but by RASON of some other great evil to which they are liable,” i.e, because of their after-effects.] Who would wish, however miserable, to exchange places with it!  Are there not other things to be considered besides happiness?  “It is better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”  And why?  In the first place, we suspect that the oyster’s, or even the fool’s, range of happiness is very limited.  We should hesitate to forego such joys as we do have, even if sorrow attends them, at so great a sacrifice.  In the second place, each of us has a deep-rooted love of his own personal memories and expectations; and except in cases of unusual depression of spirits few of us would wish to lose our identity and become some other person or thing even if we knew that other being to be happier.  In the third place, a man knows he could not be happier as an oyster; an oyster’s joys (whatever they may be) would not satisfy him; he has other needs and desires.  He must find happiness, if at all, in the satisfaction of his human cravings.  The oyster’s life, however satisfactory to the oyster, would leave him restless and bored.  If you are a Socrates, you realize similarly that you could not find satisfaction in the fool’s life.  You know that although you have sorrows the fool wots not of, you also have a whole range of joys beyond his ken; and those joys are particularly precious to you.  In the fourth place, the very words “oyster” and “fool” beg the question.  “Fool” means by very definition a sort of person one would not choose to be; and the very visualization of an oyster is repellent.  Were one to offer as the alternative a happy lion or eagle; or a happy, free- hearted savage such as Chateaubriand and Rousseau painted, one suspects that not a few suffering men and women would jump at the chance.

It is not really important to decide, however, what any one would choose.  Our choices are biased and often foolish.  The actual question is, Is the happiness of a fool, or of an oyster (if happiness it has) as worthy, as objectively desirable, as that of a wise man?  And here again we have to say, not extrinsically so desirable.  The wise man is he who finds his happiness in activities that conduce to his ultimate welfare and that of others.  The happiness of fool or oyster is transitory, blind, and fraught with unseen dangers; it is of no value to the community in which they live.  But intrinsically,