ount at all,
or reckon night and day, and who is totally unacquainted with the
revolution of the sun and moon, and the other stars. There would be
great folly in supposing that all these are not necessary parts of
knowledge to him who intends to know anything about the highest kinds of
knowledge; but which these are, and how many there are of them, and
when they are to be learned, and what is to be learned together and what
apart, and the whole correlation of them, must be rightly apprehended
first; and these leading the way we may proceed to the other parts of
knowledge. For so necessity grounded in nature constrains us, against
which we say that no God contends, or ever will contend.

CLEINIAS: I think, Stranger, that what you have now said is very true
and agreeable to nature.

ATHENIAN: Yes, Cleinias, that is so. But it is difficult for the
legislator to begin with these studies; at a more convenient time we
will make regulations for them.

CLEINIAS: You seem, Stranger, to be afraid of our habitual ignorance
of the subject: there is no reason why that should prevent you from
speaking out.

ATHENIAN: I certainly am afraid of the difficulties to which you allude,
but I am still more afraid of those who apply themselves to this sort
of knowledge, and apply themselves badly. For entire ignorance is not so
terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of
all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with an ill
bringing up, are far more fatal.

CLEINIAS: True.

ATHENIAN: All freemen I conceive, should learn as much of these branches
of knowledge as every child in Egypt is taught when he learns the
alphabet. In that country arithmetical games have been invented for the
use of mere children, which they learn as a pleasure and amusement. They
have to distribute apples and garlands, using the same number sometimes
for a larger and sometimes for a lesser number of persons; and they
arrange pugilists and wrestlers as they pair together by lot or remain
over, and show how their turns come in natural order. Another mode of
amusing them is to distribute vessels, sometimes of gold, brass, silver,
and the like, intermixed with one another, sometimes of one metal only;
as I was saying they adapt to their amusement the numbers in common use,
and in this way make more intelligible to their pupils the arrangements
and movements of armies and expeditions, and in the management of a
household they