17
Soc. And one of us is no wiser than the other merely for knowing that it is infinite or that it is one; but that which makes each of us a grammarian is the knowledge of the number and nature of sounds.
17
Pro. Very true.
17
Soc. And it is this same knowledge which makes the musician.
17
Pro. How is that?
17
Soc. Sound is one in the art of music also, so far as that art is concerned.
17
Pro. Of course.
17
Soc. And we may say that there are two sounds, low and high, and a third, which is the intermediate, may we not?
17
Pro. Yes.
17
Soc. But knowledge of these facts would not suffice to make you a musician, although ignorance of them would make you, if I may say so, quite worthless in respect to music.
17
Pro. Certainly.
17
Soc. But, my friend, when you have grasped the number and quality of the intervals of the voice in respect to high and low pitch, and the limits of the intervals, and all the combinations derived from them, which the men of former times discovered and handed down to us, their successors, with the traditional name of harmonies, and also the corresponding effects in the movements of the body, which they say are measured by numbers and must be called rhythms and measures—and they say that we must also understand that every one and many should be considered in this way— when you have thus grasped the facts, you have become a musician, and when by considering it in this way you have obtained a grasp of any other unity of all those which exist, you have become wise in respect to that unity. But the infinite number of individuals and the infinite number in each of them makes you in every instance indefinite in thought and of no account and not to be considered among the wise, so long as you have never fixed your eye upon any definite number in anything.
17
Pro. I think, Philebus, that what Socrates has said is excellent.
18
Phi. So do I; it is excellent in itself, but why has he said it now to us, and what purpose is there in it?
