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[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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