It appears to me that the justice which subsists among men, may be called the mother and the nurse of the other virtues. For without this a man can neither be temperate, nor brave, nor prudent. For it is the harmony and peace, in conjunction with elegance, of the whole soul. The strength however of this virtue will become more manifest, if we direct our attention to the other habits. For they have a partial utility, and which is referred to one thing; but this is referred to whole systems, and to a multitude. In the world therefore, it conducts the whole government of things, and is providence, harmony, and Dice, by the decree of a certain genus of Gods. But in a city it is justly called peace, and equitable legislation. And in a house, it is the concord between The following fragments also, from the Treatise of Archytas on Wisdom, are preserved by Iamblichus, in the 3rd Chapter of his Protreptics, or Exhortations to Philosophy. “Archytas therefore, in the beginning of his Treatise on Wisdom, exhorts to the possession of it as follows: 1. “Wisdom as much excels in all human affairs as the sight does the [other] corporeal senses, intellect the soul, and the sun the stars. For the sight is the most far-darting, and the most multiform of all the senses; intellect is the supreme part of the soul, judging by reason and dianoÏa what is fit, and 2. “Man was generated by far the wisest of all [terrestrial] animals. For he is able to contemplate the things which exist, and to obtain from all things science and wisdom. To which also it may be added, that divinity has engraved and exhibited in him the system of universal reason, in which all the forms of things in existence are distributed, and the significations of nouns and verbs. For a place is assigned for the sounds of the voice, viz. the pharynx, the mouth, and the nostrils. But as man was generated the instrument of the sounds, through which nouns and verbs are signified, so likewise of the conceptions which are beheld in the things that have an existence. And this appears to me to be the work of wisdom, for the accomplishment of which man was generated and constituted, and received organs and powers from divinity. 3. “Man was generated and constituted, for the purpose of contemplating the reason of the whole 4. “Wisdom is not conversant with a certain definite existing thing, but is simply conversant with all the things that exist. And it is requisite, that it should not first investigate the principles of itself, but the common principles of all beings. For wisdom so subsists with reference to all beings, that it is the province of it to know and contemplate the universal accidents of all things. And on this account wisdom discovers the principles of all beings. 5. “Whoever, therefore, is able to analyze all the genera which are contained under one and the same principle, and again to compose and con-numerate them, he appears to me to be the wisest of men, and to possess the most perfect veracity. Farther still, he will also have discovered a beautiful place of survey, from which it will be possible to behold divinity, and all things that are in co-ordination with, and successive to him, subsisting |