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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: Good, when exhibited under the aspect of measure or symmetry, becomes
beauty. And if we translate his language into corresponding modern terms,
we shall not be far wrong in saying that here, as well as in the Republic,
Plato conceives beauty under the idea of proportion.
4. Last and highest in the list of principles or elements is the cause of
the union of the finite and infinite, to which Plato ascribes the order of
the world. Reasoning from man to the universe, he argues that as there is
a mind in the one, there must be a mind in the other, which he identifies
with the royal mind of Zeus. This is the first cause of which 'our
ancestors spoke,' as he says, appealing to tradition, in the Philebus as
well as in the Timaeus. The 'one and many' is also supposed to have been
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