Republic

Or do you not know that they repeat the same procedure in the case of harmonies? They transfer it to hearing and measure audible concords and sounds against one another, expending much useless labor just as the astronomers do.” “Yes, by heaven,” he said, “and most absurdly too. They talk of something they call minims and, laying their ears alongside, as if trying to catch a voice from next door, some affirm that they can hear a note between and that this is the least interval and the unit of measurement, while others insist that the strings now render identical sounds, both preferring their ears to their minds.” You, said I, “are speaking of the worthies who vex and torture the strings and rack them on the pegs; but—not to draw out the comparison with strokes of the plectrum and the musician’s complaints of too responsive and too reluctant strings—I drop the figure, and tell you that I do not mean these people, but those others whom we just now said we would interrogate about harmony. Their method exactly corresponds to that of the astronomer; for the numbers they seek are those found in these heard concords, but they do not ascend to generalized problems and the consideration which numbers are inherently concordant and which not and why in each case.” “A superhuman task,” he said. “Say, rather, useful, said I, for the investigation of the beautiful and the good, but if otherwise pursued, useless.” “That is likely,” he said. “And what is more,” I said, I take it that if the investigation of all these studies goes far enough to bring out their community and kinship with one another, and to infer their affinities, then to busy ourselves with them contributes to our desired end, and the labor taken is not lost; but otherwise it is vain.” “I too so surmise,” said he; “but it is a huge task of which you speak, Socrates.” “Are you talking about the prelude,” I said, “or what? Or do we not know that all this is but the preamble of the law itself, the prelude of the strain that we have to apprehend? For you surely do not suppose that experts in these matters are reasoners and dialecticians? “ “No, by Zeus,” he said, “except a very few whom I have met.” “But have you ever supposed,” I said, “that men who could not render and exact an account of opinions in discussion would ever know anything of the things we say must be known?” “No is surely the answer to that too.”