truth and certainty
of numbers, when thus disengaged from phenomena, gave them a kind of
sacredness in the eyes of an ancient philosopher. Nor is it easy to say
how far ideas of order and fixedness may have had a moral and elevating
influence on the minds of men, 'who,' in the words of the Timaeus,
'might learn to regulate their erring lives according to them.' It is
worthy of remark that the old Pythagorean ethical symbols still exist as
figures of speech among ourselves. And those who in modern times see the
world pervaded by universal law, may also see an anticipation of this
last word of modern philosophy in the Platonic idea of good, which
is the source and measure of all things, and yet only an abstraction
(Philebus).

Two passages seem to require more particular explanations. First, that
which relates to the analysis of vision. The difficulty in this passage
may be explained, like many others, from differences in the modes of
conception prevailing among ancient and modern thinkers. To us, the
perceptions of sense are inseparable from the act of the mind which
accompanies them. The consciousness of form, colour, distance, is
indistinguishable from the simple sensation, which is the medium of
them. Whereas to Plato sense is the Heraclitean flux of sense, not the
vision of objects in the order in which they actually present themselves
to the experienced sight, but as they may be imagined to appear confused
and blurred to the half-awakened eye of the infant. The first action of
the mind is aroused by the attempt to set in order this chaos, and
the reason is required to frame distinct conceptions under which
the confused impressions of sense may be arranged. Hence arises
the question, 'What is great, what is small?' and thus begins the
distinction of the visible and the intelligible.

The second difficulty relates to Plato's conception of harmonics.
Three classes of harmonists are distinguished by him:--first, the
Pythagoreans, whom he proposes to consult as in the previous discussion
on music he was to consult Damon--they are acknowledged to be masters
in the art, but are altogether deficient in the knowledge of its higher
import and relation to the good; secondly, the mere empirics, whom
Glaucon appears to confuse with them, and whom both he and Socrates
ludicrously describe as experimenting by mere auscultation on the
intervals of sounds. Both of these fall short in different degrees of
the Platonic idea of harmo