Philebus
Plato (428–347 BC)
Plato's Philebus in the Greek text edited by John Burnet, with Harold North Fowler's English translation.
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Section 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?
Soc. Protarchus, that is a very proper question which Philebus has asked us.
Pro. Certainly it is, so please answer it.
Soc. I will, when I have said a little more on just this subject. For if a person begins with some unity or other, he must, as I was saying, not turn immediately to infinity, but to some definite number; now just so, conversely, when he has to take the infinite first, he must not turn immediately to the one, but must think of some number which possesses in each case some plurality, and must end by passing from all to one. Let us revert to the letters of the alphabet to illustrate this.
Pro. How?
Soc. When some one, whether god or godlike man,—there is an Egyptian story that his name was Theuth—observed that sound was infinite, he was the first to notice that the vowel sounds in that infinity were not one, but many, and again that there were other elements which were not vowels but did have a sonant quality, and that these also had a definite number; and he distinguished a third kind of letters which we now call mutes. Then he divided the mutes until he distinguished each individual one, and he treated the vowels and semivowels in the same way, until he knew the number of them and gave to each and all the name of letters. Perceiving, however, that none of us could learn any one of them alone by itself without learning them all, and considering that this was a common bond which made them in a way all one, he assigned to them all a single science and called it grammar.
Phi. I understand that more clearly than the earlier statement, Protarchus, so far as the reciprocal relations of the one and the many are concerned, but I still feel the same lack as a little while ago.
Soc. Do you mean, Philebus, that you do not see what this has to do with the question?
Phi. Yes; that is what Protarchus and I have been trying to discover for a long time.
Soc. Really, have you been trying, as you say, for long time to discover it, when it was close to you all the while?
Phi. How is that?
Soc. Was not our discussion from the beginning about wisdom and pleasure and which of them is preferable?
Phi. Yes, of course.
Soc. And surely we say that each of them is one.
Phi. Certainly.