Note 100 — Chapter III · ToC

There is a beautiful lecture on the moral meaning of Geometry by Dr. Hutchinson, in The Spirit of Masonry—one of the oldest, as it is one of the noblest, books in our Masonic literature. Plutarch reports Plato as saying, "God is always geometrizing" (Diog. Laert., iv, 2). Elsewhere Plato remarks that "Geometry rightly treated is the knowledge of the Eternal" (Republic, 527b), and over the porch of his Academy at Athens he wrote the words, "Let no one who is ignorant of Geometry enter my doors." So Aristotle and all the ancient thinkers, whether in Egypt or India. Pythagoras, Proclus tells us, was concerned only with number and magnitude: number absolute, in arithmetic; number applied, in music; and so forth—whereof we read in the Old Charges (see "The Great Symbol," by Klein, A. Q. C., x, 82).