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[26b] by mixture of the infinite with the finite?

Protarchus
Of course.

Socrates
There are countless other things which I pass over, such as health, beauty, and strength of the body and the many glorious beauties of the soul. For this goddess,1 my fair Philebus, beholding the violence and universal wickedness which prevailed, since there was no limit of pleasures or of indulgence in them, established law and order, which contain a limit. You say she did harm;


1 This goddess may beΜουσική(in which caseἐγγενομένηthe reading of T and G, would be preferable toἐγγενόμεναabove), not music in the restricted modern sense, but the spirit of numbers and measure which underlies all music, and all the beauties of the world; or the goddess may be mentioned here in reference (and opposition) to the goddess Pleasure (12 B); she is the nameless deity who makes Pleasure and all others conform to her rules.

Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925.

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