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[357b] the greater and the smaller, and the nearer and the remoter—is it not evident, in the first place, that measurement is a study of their excess and defect and equality in relation to each other?

This must needs be so.

And being measurement, I presume it must be an art or science?

They will assent to this.

Well, the nature of this art or science we shall consider some other time1; but the mere fact of its being a science will suffice for the proof which Protagoras and I


1 The intellectual control of our sense-perceptions, which differ as to the size or number of the same things when near and when distant, etc., has an important part in the educational scheme of the Republic. The measuring art is further considered in the Politicus (283 ff.).

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