3–5
Buyer
How will you remind me?
Pythagoras
By first making your soul clean, and washing off the filth that is on it.
Buyer
Now, suppose me already purified, what is your method of reminding?
Pythagoras
The first step is a long, speechless silence; you must not say a word for five whole years.
10
Buyer
You ought to teach mutes, my friend. But I am a talker with no desire to become a graven image. All the same, what comes after the silence and the five-year term?
Pythagoras
Practise in music and geometry.
Buyer
That is a nice statement! If I am to become a philosopher I must first learn to play the harp!
Pythagoras
In addition to these, counting.
Pythagoras
How do you do it?
Buyer
One, two, three, four.
Pythagoras
Look, now; what you deem four is really ten, and a perfect triangle, and what we swear by.
5
Buyer
Hear me swear a mighty oath: by Four, I never heard diviner or more holy words.
Pythagoras
And after that, stranger, you will have knowledge concerning earth and air and water and fire-the mass of each, and what form it has, and what motion by consequence.
Buyer
Then has fire form, or air, or water?
Pythagoras
Very clear forms, for the formless and shapeless is immovable; and besides these things you will know that God is number and mind and harmony.
Buyer
This is startling!
10
Pythagoras
Beyond what I have already said, you will know that you yourself, who seem to be a unit, are one person in appearance and another in reality.
Buyer
What do you say? Am I somebody else and not this person now talking to you?
