immediately confer to human utility, (for the ultimate limits of its progressions, and whatever operates with matter, consider a use of this kind;) but on the contrary we should admire its immateriality, and the good which it contains, considered by itself alone. For when mankind were entirely disengaged from the care of necessary concerns, they converted themselves to the investigation of the mathematical disciplines; and this, indeed, with the greatest propriety. Since affairs familiar to human life in its most imperfect state, and which are immediately connected with its origin, first of all employed the studies of mankind: but, in the second place, those concerns succeeded which separate the soul from generation, and restore its memory of that which _IS_. After this manner, then, we are engaged in necessaries, before things honourable for their own sakes, on account of their intrinsic dignity and worth; and in things related to sense, before such as are apprehended by the nobler energies of mind. For every origin and life of the soul which is converted into herself, is naturally adapted to proceed from the imperfect to the perfect. And thus much against those who despise the mathematical science.” CHAP. X. _A Solution of another Objection of certain Platonists, against the Utility of the Mathematical Sciences._ But, perhaps, some of our own family will here rise up against us, and, proposing Plato as a witness, will endeavour to provoke ruder understandings into a contemptuous disregard of the mathematical disciplines. For they will say, that this philosopher entirely excludes (in his Republic) the mathematical knowledge from the choir of the sciences, and that he accuses it as being ignorant of its own principles, that its very principle is to itself unknown, and its ends and mediums composed from things of which it is ignorant. To these objections they may likewise add whatever other reproaches are there urged by Socrates against this contemplation. In answer then, to the objections of our friends, we shall recall into their memory, that Plato himself perspicuously asserts the mathematical science to be the purgation of the soul, and that it is endued with a power of leading it on high; because, like the Homeric Minerva, it removes the darkness of a sensible nature from the intellectual light of thought, which is better worth saving than ten thousand corporeal eyes, and which not only participates of a mercurial gift, (preserving us from the incantations and delusions of this material abode, which is similar to the fascinating realms of Circe,) but also of the more divine arts of Minerva. He likewise every where calls it by the name of science, and asserts that it is the cause of the greatest felicity to those who are exercised in its contemplation. But I will briefly explain why, in the Republic he takes from it the surname of science: for my