Taylor - Theoretic Arithmetic.pdf - Platonic Philosophy

XXXIV
INTRODUCTION
tirely the praise of a dull mind, and which looks to a thing of
a trifling nature; through want of discipline being incapable
of always surveying the universe, and of inferring by a reasoning
process, that every man has had innumerable myriads of
grandfathers and progenitors, among which there has of ten
been an innumerable multitude of rich and poor, kings and
slaves, Barbarians and Grecians. But when any one, celebrating
his progenitors, enumerates five-and-twenty of them, and
refers their origin to Hercules, the son of Amphitryon, it appears
to him a thing unworthy to be mentioned. For, as it is
entirely owing to fortune that any one is able to enumerate
five-and-twenty progenitors from Hercules, he would laugh,
even if any one could enumerate fifty from the same origin;
considering such as unable to reason, and liberate themselves
from the arrogance of an insane soul. But, in every thing of
this kind, the coryphaeus we are describing will be ridiculed
by the vulgar, partly because he will be considered by them
as arrogant, and partly because he is ignorant of, and dubious
about, things before his feet.
"Theodoras. You speak, Socrates, of things which certainly
take place.
tt
Socrates. But when any one, my friend, draws him on
high, and is willing that he should abandon the consideration
of whether I injure you, or you me, for the speculation of justice
and injustice, what each of them is, and in what they differ
from all other things, or from each other; or that, dismiss
ing the inquiry whether a king is happy who possesses abundance
of gold, he should ascend to the contemplation of a
kingdom, and universally of human felicity and misery, of
what kind they are to any one, and after what manner it is
proper for human nature to acquire this thing and fly from
that ;-about all these particulars when that little sharp soul,
so conversant with law, is required to give a reason, then he in