im. But pray consider whether Plato, though you
do not apprehend it, doth not intimate something that is proper and
peculiar to you, mixing Lycurgus with Socrates, as much as Dicaearchus
thought he did Pythagoras. For Lycurgus, I suppose you know, banished
out of Sparta all arithmetical proportion, as being democratical and
favoring the crowd; but introduced the geometrical, as agreeable to an
oligarchy and kingly government that rules by law; for the former gives
an equal share to every one according to number, but the other gives
according to the proportion of the deserts. It doth not huddle all
things together, but in it there is a fair discretion of good and
bad, every one having what is fit for him, not by lot or weight, but
according as he is virtuous or vicious. The same proportion, my dear
Tyndares, God introduceth, which is called [Greek omitted] and [Greek
omitted], and which teacheth us to account that which is just equal, and
not that which is equal just. For that equality which many affect, being
often the greatest injustice, God, as much as possible, takes away; and
useth that proportion which respects every man's deserts, geometrically
defining it according to law and reason.

This exposition we applauded; and Tyndares, saying he envied him,
desired Autobulus to engage Florus and confute his discourse. That he
refused to do, but produced another opinion of his own. Geometry, said
he, considers nothing else but the accidents and properties of the
extremities of bodies; neither did God make the world any other way than
by terminating matter, which was infinite before. Not that matter was
actually without limits as to either magnitude or multitude; but the
ancients used to call that infinite which by reason of its confusion
and disorder is undetermined and unconfined. Now the terms of everything
that is formed or figured are the form and figure of that thing, and
without which the thing would be formless and unfigured. Now numbers and
proportions being applied to matter, it is circumscribed and as it were
bound up by lines, and through lines by surfaces and solids; and so were
settled the first types and differences of bodies, as foundations from
which to create the four elements, fire, air, water, and earth. For
it was impossible that, out of an unsteady and confused matter, the
equality of the sides, the likeness of the angles, and the exact
proportion of octahedrons, icosahedrons, pyramids, and cubes shoul