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[527b] the real object of the entire study is pure knowledge.1” “That is absolutely true,” he said. “And must we not agree on a further point?” “What?” “That it is the knowledge of that which always is,2 and not of a something which at some time comes into being and passes away.” “That is readily admitted,” he said, “for geometry is the knowledge of the eternally existent.” “Then, my good friend, it would tend to draw the soul to truth, and would be productive of a philosophic attitude of mind, directing upward the faculties that now wrongly are turned earthward.” “Nothing is surer,” he said.

1 Cf. Meyerson, De l'explication dans les sciences, p. 33: “En effet, Platon déjà fait ressortir que Ia géométrie, en dépit de l'apparence, ne poursuit aucun but pratique et n'a tout entière d'autre objet que Ia connaissance.

2 i.e. mathematical ideas are (Platonic) ideas like other concepts. Cf. on 525 D, p. 164, note a.

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