[525d]
that there is something fine in it, and that it is useful
for our purpose in many ways, provided it is pursued for the sake of
knowledge1 and not for
huckstering.” “In what respect?” he said.
“Why, in respect of the very point of which we were speaking, that it
strongly directs the soul upward and compels it to discourse about pure
numbers,2 never acquiescing
if anyone proffers to it in the discussion numbers attached to visible and
tangible bodies. For you are doubtless aware
1 Cf. Aristot. Met. 982 a 15τοῦ εἰδέναι χάριν, and Laws 741 C. Montesquieu apud Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, p. 6: “The first motive which ought to impel us to study is the desire to augment the excellence of our nature and to render an intelligent being more intelligent.”
2 Lit. “numbers (in) themselves,” i.e. ideal numbers or the ideas of numbers. For this and the following as one of the sources of the silly notion that mathematical numbers are intermediate between ideal and concrete numbers, cf. my De Platonis Idearum Doctrina, p. 33, Unity of Plato's Thought, pp. 83-84, Class. Phil. xxii. (1927) pp. 213-218.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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