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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: best expressed to us by the word 'law.' It is that which measures all
things and assigns to them their limit; which preserves them in their
natural state, and brings them within the sphere of human cognition. This
is described by the terms harmony, health, order, perfection, and the like.
All things, in as far as they are good, even pleasures, which are for the
most part indefinite, partake of this element. We should be wrong in
attributing to Plato the conception of laws of nature derived from
observation and experiment. And yet he has as intense a conviction as any
modern philosopher that nature does not proceed by chance. But observing
that the wonderful construction of number and figure, which he had within
himself, and which seemed to be prior to himself, explained a part of the
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