The Religious Thoughts Of Plato In Formal Linguistics [2]

Russell (1961: 150-1):

Thought is best, [Plato's] Socrates says, when the mind is gathered into itself, and is not troubled by sounds or sights or pain or pleasure but takes leave of the body and aspires after true being; 'and in this the philosopher dishonours the body'.  From this point, Socrates goes on to the ideas or forms or essences.  There is absolute justice, absolute beauty and absolute good, but they are not visible to the eye. … All these are only to be seen by intellectual vision. …

This point of view excludes scientific observation and experiment as methods for the attainment of knowledge.  The experimenter's mind is not 'gathered into itself', and does not aim at avoiding sounds or sights.  The two kinds mental activity that can be pursued by the method that Plato recommends are mathematics and mystic insight.  This explains how these two come to be so intimately combined in Plato and the Pythagoreans.

To the empiricist, the body is what brings us in touch with the world of external reality, but to Plato it is doubly evil, as a distorting medium, causing us to see through a glass darkly, and as a source of lusts which distract us from the pursuit of knowledge and the vision of truth.