Plato, Philebus, section 56c

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[56c] and an ingenious instrument called a vice.

Protarchus
Certainly, Socrates; you are right.

Socrates
Let us, then, divide the arts, as they are called, into two kinds, those which resemble music, and have less accuracy in their works, and those which, like building, are more exact.

Protarchus
Agreed.

Socrates
And of these the most exact are the arts which I just now mentioned first.

Protarchus
I think you mean arithmetic and the other arts you mentioned with it just now.

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925.

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