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[508a] and gods and men are held together by communion and friendship, by orderliness, temperance, and justice; and that is the reason, my friend, why they call the whole of this world by the name of order,1 not of disorder or dissoluteness. Now you, as it seems to me, do not give proper attention to this, for all your cleverness, but have failed to observe the great power of geometrical equality amongst both gods and men: you hold that self-advantage is what one ought to practice, because you neglect geometry. Very well: either we must refute this statement, that it is by the possession


1 Κόσμος (“order”) was the name first given to the universe by the Pythagoreans.

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