[819a]
Athenian
I am indeed scared about the habit you mention, but I am still more alarmed about the people who take up these very sciences for study, and do so badly.1 Complete and absolute ignorance of them is never alarming, nor is it a very great evil; much more mischievous is a wide variety of knowledge and learning combined with bad training.Clinias
That is true.Athenian
One ought to declare, then, that the freeborn children should learn as much of these subjects as the innumerable crowd of children in Egypt2 learn along with their letters.
1 Cp. Plat. Laws 886a.
2 The Egyptian priests are said to have specially drilled their scholars in arithmetic and geometry—partly with a view to their use in land-mensuration.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 10 & 11 translated by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967 & 1968.
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