f things, the absolute being which is the goal of all thinking is the
very good itself. Plato does not use the term good in any merely
utilitarian sense. Indeed it is very significant that for Plato there is
no cleavage between theoretical and practical interests. To be morally
good is to know the good, to set one's heart on the true object of
affection; and to be theoretically sound is to understand perfection.
The good itself is the end of every aim, that in which all interests
converge. Hence it cannot be defined, as might a special good, in terms
of the fulfilment of a set of concrete conditions, but only in terms of
the sense or direction of all purposes. The following passage occurs in
the "Symposium":

"The true order of going or being led by others to the things
of love, is to use the beauties of earth as steps along which
he mounts upward for the sake of that other beauty, going from
one to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair
forms to fair actions, and from fair actions to fair notions,
until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute
beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty
is."[329:8]

[Sidenote: The Progression of Experience toward God.]

Sect. 161. There is, then, a "true order of going," and an order that
leads from one to many, from thence to forms, from thence to morality,
and from thence to the general objects of thought or _the ideas_. In the
"Republic," where the proper education of the philosopher is in
question, it is proposed that he shall study arithmetic, geometry,
astronomy, and dialectic. Thus in each case mathematics is the first
advance in knowledge, and dialectic the nearest to perfection. Most of
Plato's examples are drawn from mathematics. This science replaces the
variety and vagueness of the forms of experience with _clear_,
_unitary_, _definite_, and _eternal_ natures, such as the number and
the geometrical figure. Thus certain individual things are approximately
triangular, but subject to alteration, and indefinitely many. On the
other hand the triangle as defined by geometry is the fixed and
unequivocal nature or idea which such experiences suggest; and the
philosophical mind will at once pass to it from these. But the
mathematical objects are themselves not thoroughly understood when
understood only in mathematical terms, for the foundations of
mathematics are arbitrary. And the same is true of all the