15
Well, you know, of course, that in the Sophist Plato, Sophist, 256 c. he demonstrates that the supreme first principles are five: Being, Identity, Divergence, and fourth and fifth besides these, Motion and Rest. Cf. 428 c, infra. But in the Philebus Plato, Philebus, 23 c. he employs another method of division and affirms that the Infinite is one and the Definite a second, and from the combination of these all generation arises. The cause which makes them combine he posits as a fourth class; the fifth he has left for us to surmise, by which the things combined attain once more dissociation and disengagement. I infer that these are intended to be figurative expressions corresponding to those just mentioned, generation corresponding to being, the infinite to motion, the definite to rest, the combining principle to identity, and the dissociating principle to divergence. But if these last are not the same as the others, even so, considered either in that way or in this, his division into five different classes would still hold good.
15
Evidently someone anticipated Plato in comprehending this before he did, and for that reason dedicated to the god an E as a demonstration and symbol of the number of all the elements.
15
Furthermore, observing that the Good displays itself under five categories, Cf. ibid. 66 a-c. of which the first is moderation, the second due proportion, the third the mind, the fourth the sciences and arts and the true opinions that have to do with the soul, and the fifth any pleasure that is pure and unalloyed with pain, at this point he leaves off, thus suggesting the Orphic verseOrphic Fragments, no. 14. Bring to an end the current of song in the sixth generation.
