e been a pupil of Plato). Of the
degree of importance or of exactness to be attributed to the problem,
the number of the tyrant in Book IX (729 = 365 x 2), and the slight
correction of the error in the number 5040/12 (Laws), may furnish a
criterion. There is nothing surprising in the circumstance that those
who were seeking for order in nature and had found order in number,
should have imagined one to give law to the other. Plato believes in
a power of number far beyond what he could see realized in the world
around him, and he knows the great influence which 'the little matter
of 1, 2, 3' exercises upon education. He may even be thought to have a
prophetic anticipation of the discoveries of Quetelet and others, that
numbers depend upon numbers; e.g.--in population, the numbers of births
and the respective numbers of children born of either sex, on the
respective ages of parents, i.e. on other numbers.

BOOK IX. Last of all comes the tyrannical man, about whom we have to
enquire, Whence is he, and how does he live--in happiness or in misery?
There is, however, a previous question of the nature and number of
the appetites, which I should like to consider first. Some of them
are unlawful, and yet admit of being chastened and weakened in various
degrees by the power of reason and law. 'What appetites do you mean?' I
mean those which are awake when the reasoning powers are asleep, which
get up and walk about naked without any self-respect or shame; and there
is no conceivable folly or crime, however cruel or unnatural, of which,
in imagination, they may not be guilty. 'True,' he said; 'very true.'
But when a man's pulse beats temperately; and he has supped on a feast
of reason and come to a knowledge of himself before going to rest, and
has satisfied his desires just enough to prevent their perturbing his
reason, which remains clear and luminous, and when he is free from
quarrel and heat,--the visions which he has on his bed are least
irregular and abnormal. Even in good men there is such an irregular
wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.

To return:--You remember what was said of the democrat; that he was the
son of a miserly father, who encouraged the saving desires and repressed
the ornamental and expensive ones; presently the youth got into fine
company, and began to entertain a dislike to his father's narrow ways;
and being a better man than the corrupters of his youth, he came to a
mean, and led a life, not of