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[88b] and weak intellect, inasmuch as two desires naturally exist amongst men, —the desire of food for the body's sake, and the desire of wisdom for the sake of the most divine part we have,—the motions of the stronger part prevail and augment their own power, but they make that of the soul obtuse and dull of wit and forgetful, and thereby they produce within it that greatest of diseases, ignorance.

From both these evils the one means of salvation is this—neither to exercise the soul without the body nor the body without the soul,1 so that they may be evenly matched and sound of health. Thus the student of mathematics,


1 Cf. Laws728 E.

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    • James Adam, The Republic of Plato, 3.411E
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