IV. Plato as a Mystic

All manner of knowledge not borrowed from sense-reality is grounded on such thoughts. The whole of mathematics consists of them. He would be a bad geometrician who could only bring into mathematical relations what he can see with his eyes and touch with his hands. Thus we have thoughts which do not origiNate in perishable nature, but arise out of the spirit. And it is these that bear in them the mark of Eternal Truth. What mathematics teaches will be eternally true, even if tomorrow the whole cosmic system should fall into ruins and an entirely new one arise. Conditions might prevail in another cosmic system to which our present mathematical truths would not apply, but these would be none the less true in themselves.