Epinomis

Someone, looking at the crafts, might perhaps think that the human race needs number for small things — and yet even this is a great thing; but if one were to see the divine in coming into being and the mortal, in which reverence toward the gods will also be recognized, and number 978a really, then no longer would just anyone know¹ how great a power all number would be the cause of for us when it comes to be with us — since it is clear that the things of all music, too, need movement and sounds counted out — and, the greatest thing, that it is the cause of all good things; but that it is the cause of nothing bad, this must be well known, as perhaps it may be. But the motion that is, very nearly, without reckoning and without order, unseemly and without rhythm and out of harmony, and everything that 978b has shared in anything bad, has been left without any number; and whoever is to end his life happy must think about this so. And as for the just and good and fine and all such things, no one who does not know, having laid hold of true opinion, will ever count them out so as to persuade himself and another at all.

Let us go, then, to look into just this: how we learned to count. Come: one and two, from where did it come to us 978c to think of them, we who have from the universe this nature, so as to be able to think of them? But for many other living beings nature has not come even as far as this, that they should be able to learn to count from the father;² but in us the god first settled this very thing, so that we should be good enough to understand what is shown us, and then he showed it, and shows it. And of these, what one thing finer than another could anyone behold except the kind that is the day, and then come to the part that belongs to night, having his sight, from where everything 978d would appear different to him? And indeed, when heaven does not cease rolling round these very things, many nights and many days, it never³