Kitap 7
817
Clin. Of course we now agree to it.
818
Ath. There still remain, for the freeborn, three branches of learning: of these the first is reckoning and arithmetic; the second is the art of measuring length and surface and solid; the third deals with the course of the stars, and how they naturally travel in relation to one another. All these sciences should not be studied with minute accuracy by the majority of pupils, but only by a select few—and who these are we shall say when we have come near the end,—since that will be the proper place:Cp. Plat. Laws 962c, Plat. Laws 965a. but for the bulk of the pupils, while it would be shameful for most of them not to understand all those parts of them that are most truly termed necessary, yet it is not easy nor even at all possible for every student to go into them minutely. The necessary part of them it is impossible to reject, and probably this is what was in the mind of the original author of the proverb,Cp. Plat. Laws 741a. Not even God will ever be seen fighting against Necessity,—meaning by this, I suppose, all kinds of necessity that are divine, since in relation to human necessities (to which most people apply the saying when they quote it) it is of all sayings far and away the most fatuous.
818
Clin. What necessities then, Stranger, belong to these sciences, that are not of this sort, but divine?
