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The distinction between the mathematician and the dialectician is

also noticeable. Plato is very well aware that the faculty of the

mathematician is quite distinct from the higher philosophical

sense which recognizes and combines first principles. The

contempt which he expresses for distinctions of words, the danger

of involuntary falsehood, the apology which Socrates makes for

his earnestness of speech, are highly characteristic of the

Platonic style and mode of thought. The quaint notion that if

Palamedes was the inventor of number Agamemnon could not have

counted his feet; the art by which we are made to believe that

this State of ours is not a dream only; the gravity with which

the first step is taken in the actual creation of the State,

namely, the sending out of the city all who had arrived at ten

years of age, in order to expedite the business of education by a

generation, are also truly Platonic.