Plato Epinomis 978

  And one may judge, perhaps, for brevity’s sake how the human race needs number, by glancing at the arts—and yet that too is a great matter—but if you note the divinity of birth, and its mortality, in which awe of the divine must be acknowledged, and real number, ¹ 978a it is not anybody who can tell how great is the power which we owe to the accompaniment of number as a whole—for it is clear that everything in music needs a distinct numeration of movement and notes—and above all, how it is the cause of all good things; and that it is the cause of no evil thing is a point that must be well understood, as it may be quickly enough. Nay, the motion that we may call unreasoned and unordered, lacking shape and rhythm and harmony, and everything that has a share of some evil, 978b is deficient in number altogether; and in this light must the matter be regarded by him who means to end his life in happiness. And no one who does not know the just, the good, the honorable and all the rest of such qualities, with a hold on true opinion, will number them off so as fully to persuade both himself and his neighbor.
  Now let us go on to inquire into the actual question of how we learnt to count in numbers. Tell me, whence have we got the conception of one and two, a natural gift that 978c we have from the All to enable us to conceive of their existence? Then again, many other living creatures are not endowed by nature even to the actual point of being able to learn from their father to count; whereas in us, in the first place, God implanted this very conception, so that we might be equal to comprehending it when shown to us, and in the second place, he showed it and shows it. Among such things, what one more singularly beautiful can a man behold than the world of day? Then he comes to the province of night, and views it; and there quite another sight 978d lies before him. And so the heaven, revolving these very objects for many nights and many days, never ceases to teach men one and two, until even the most unintelligent have learnt sufficiently to number; for that there are also three and four and many, each of us must further conceive on seeing those objects. And God made one thing that he wrought from them, the moon, which shows herself at one time larger, at another smaller, and runs her course, 978e showing ever a new shape, ² until fifteen days and nights are passed: this is her circuit, if one chooses to sum her orbit, as one and entire, in one ³ ; so that, we may say, even the least intelligent creature must learn it, among those on whom God has bestowed the natural gift of being able to learn.