Here Cleombrotus having paused, his discourse seemed strange to all the company, and Heracleon demanded of him, how all this concerned Plato, and how he had given occasion to this discourse. Unto which Cleombrotus answered: You do well to put me in mind of it; for first, Plato ever rejected the infinity of worlds, yet would determine nothing positively touching the precise number of them. And granting the probability of their opinion who affirmed there were five, one for each element, as to his own part, he kept to one, which seems to be his genuine opinion; whereas all other philosophers have been afraid to receive and admit the multitude of worlds, as if those who did not limit matter to one must needs fall into troublesome and boundless infinity. But was this stranger, said I, of the same opinion with Plato, touching the number of the worlds? Or did you not all the while ask his opinion in that matter? I was far from failing herein, says Cleombrotus, seeing I found him so communicative and affable to me. He told me, that neither was the number of the worlds infinite, neither was there but only one, nor five; but a hundred and eighty-three, which were ranged in a triangular form, every side containing sixty worlds; and of the three remaining, every corner had one. That they were so ordered, that one always touched another in a circle, like those who dance in a ring. That the plain within the triangle is, as it were, the foundation and common altar to all those worlds, which is called the Plain of Truth, in which lie the designs, moulds, ideas, and invariable examples of all things which were, or ever shall be; and about these is Eternity, whence flowed Time, as from a river, into these worlds. Moreover, that the souls of men, if they have lived well in this world, do see these ideas once in ten thousand years; and that the most holy mystical ceremonies which are performed here are no more than a dream of this sacred vision. And further, that all the pains which are taken in the study of philosophy are to attain to a sight of those beauties; otherwise they were all lost labors. I heard him, said he, relate all these things as perfectly, as if they had been some religious rites wherein he would have instructed me; for he brought me no proof or demonstration to confirm what he said.