[476b]
and men of action, and
separate from them again those with whom our argument is concerned and who
alone deserve the appellation of philosophers or lovers of
wisdom.” “What do you mean?” he said.
“The lovers of sounds and sights,” I said,
“delight in beautiful tones and colors and shapes and in
everything that art fashions out of these, but their thought is incapable of
apprehending and taking delight in the nature of the beautiful in
itself.” “Why, yes,” he said, “that
is so.” “And on the other hand, will not those be
few1 who would be able to approach beauty itself and contemplate it in
and by itself?”
1 “Le petit nombre des élus” is a common topic in Plato. Cf. on 494 A.
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