BOOK VII.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Plato and Benjamin Jowett
Quite so.
And should we not enquire what sort of knowledge has the Dpower of effecting such a change?
Certainly.
What knowledge will draw the soul upwards? What sort of knowledge is there which would draw the soul from becoming to being? And another consideration has just occurred to me: You will remember that our young men are to be warrior athletes?
Yes, that was said.
Then this new kind of knowledge must have an additional quality?
What quality?
Usefulness in war.
Yes, if possible.
Recapitulation. There were two parts in our former scheme of education, Ewere there not?
There were two parts in our former scheme of education, were there not? Just so.
There was gymnastic which presided over the growth and decay of the body, and may therefore be regarded as having to do with generation and corruption?
True.
522 Then that is not the knowledge which we are seeking to discover? 223
No.
But what do you say of music, which also entered to a certain extent into our former scheme?
Music, he said, as you will remember, was the counterpart of gymnastic, and trained the guardians by the influences of habit, by harmony making them harmonious, by rhythm rhythmical, but not giving them science; and the words, whether fabulous or possibly true, had kindred elements of rhythm and harmony in them. But in music there was Bnothing which tended to that good which you are now seeking.
You are most accurate, I said, in your recollection; in music there certainly was nothing of the kind. But what branch of knowledge is there, my dear Glaucon, which is of the desired nature; since all the useful arts were reckoned mean by us?
Undoubtedly; and yet if music and gymnastic are excluded, and the arts are also excluded, what remains?
Well, I said, there may be nothing left of our special subjects; and then we shall have to take something which is not special, but of universal application.
What may that be?
CThere remains for the second education, arithmetic; A something which all arts and sciences and intelligences use in common, and which every one first has to learn among the elements of education.
What is that?
The little matter of distinguishing one, two, and three—in a word, number and calculation:—do not all arts and sciences necessarily partake of them?
Yes.
Then the art of war partakes of them?
To be sure.
D Then Palamedes, whenever he appears in tragedy, proves Agamemnon ridiculously unfit to be a general. Did you never remark how he declares that he had invented number, and had numbered the ships and set in array the ranks of the army at Troy; which implies that they had never been numbered before, and Agamemnon must be supposed literally to have been incapable of counting his own feet—how could he if he was ignorant of number? And if that is true, what sort of general must he have been? 224
I should say a very strange one, if this was as you say.
E Can we deny that a warrior should have a knowledge of arithmetic?
Certainly he should, if he is to have the smallest understanding of military tactics, or indeed, I should rather say, if he is to be a man at all.
I should like to know whether you have the same notion which I have of this study?
What is your notion?
that being a study which leads naturally to reflection, for It appears to me to be a study of the kind which we are 523seeking, and which leads naturally to reflection, but never to have been rightly used; for the true use of it is simply to draw the soul towards being.
Will you explain your meaning? he said.
I will try, I said; and I wish you would share the enquiry with me, and say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when I attempt to distinguish in my own mind what branches of knowledge have this attracting power, in order that we may have clearer proof that arithmetic is, as I suspect, one of them.
Explain, he said.
reflection is aroused by contradictory impressions of sense. I mean to say that objects of sense are of two kinds; some Bof them do not invite thought because the sense is an adequate judge of them; while in the case of other objects sense is so untrustworthy that further enquiry is imperatively demanded.
You are clearly referring, he said, to the manner in which the senses are imposed upon by distance, and by painting in light and shade.
Source notes
3 Reading οὖσαν ἐπάνοδον.