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Title: Timaeus
Author: Plato
Language: English
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TIMAEUS
by Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
Contents
INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
Section 1.
Section 2.
Section 3.
Section 4.
Section 5.
Section 6.
Section 7.
Section 8.
TIMAEUS
INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
Of all the writings of Plato the Timaeus is the most obscure and
repulsive to the modern reader, and has nevertheless had the
greatest influence over the ancient and mediaeval world. The
obscurity arises in the infancy of physical science, out of the
confusion of theological, mathematical, and physiological
notions, out of the desire to conceive the whole of nature
without any adequate knowledge of the parts, and from a greater
perception of similarities which lie on the surface than of
differences which are hidden from view. To bring sense under the
control of reason; to find some way through the mist or labyrinth
of appearances, either the highway of mathematics, or more
devious paths suggested by the analogy of man with the world, and
of the world with man; to see that all things have a cause and
are tending towards an end—this is the spirit of the ancient
physical philosopher. He has no notion of trying an experiment
and is hardly capable of observing the curiosities of nature
which are ‘tumbling out at his feet,’ or of interpreting even the
most obvious of them. He is driven back from the nearer to the
more distant, from particulars to generalities, from the earth to
the stars. He lifts up his eyes to the heavens and seeks to guide
by their motions his erring footsteps. But we neither appreciate
the conditions of knowledge to which he was subjected, nor have
the ideas which fastened upon his imagination the same hold upon
us. For he is hanging between matter and mind; he is under the
dominion at the same time both of sense and of abstractions; his
impressions are taken almost at random from the outside of
nature; he sees the light, but not the objects which are revealed
by the light; and he brings into juxtaposition things which to us
appear wide as the poles asunder, because he finds nothing
between them. He passes abruptly from persons to ideas and
numbers, and from ideas and numbers to persons,—from the heavens
to man, from astronomy to physiology; he confuses, or rather does
not distinguish, subject and object, first and final causes, and
is dreaming of geometrical figures lost in a flux of sense. He
contrasts the perfect movements of the heavenly bodies with the
imperfect representation of them (Rep.), and he does not always
require strict accuracy even in applications of number and figure
(Rep.). His mind lingers around the forms of mythology, which he
uses as symbols or translates into figures of speech. He has no
implements of observation, such as the telescope or microscope;
the great science of chemistry is a blank to him. It is only by
an effort that the modern thinker can breathe the atmosphere of
the ancient philosopher, or understand how, under such unequal
conditions, he seems in many instances, by a sort of inspiration,
to have anticipated the truth.
The influence with the Timaeus has exercised upon posterity is
due partly to a misunderstanding. In the supposed depths of this
dialogue the Neo-Platonists found hidden meanings and connections
with the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, and out of them they
elicited doctrines quite at variance with the spirit of Plato.
Believing that he was inspired by the Holy Ghost, or had received
his wisdom from Moses, they seemed to find in his writings the
Christian Trinity, the Word, the Church, the creation of the
world in a Jewish sense, as they really found the personality of
God or of mind, and the immortality of the soul. All religions
and philosophies met and mingled in the schools of Alexandria,
and the Neo-Platonists had a method of interpretation which could
elicit any meaning out of any words. They were really incapable
of distinguishing between the opinions of one philosopher and
another— between Aristotle and Plato, or between the serious
thoughts of Plato and his passing fancies. They were absorbed in
his theology and were under the dominion of his name, while that
which was truly great and truly characteristic in him, his effort
to realize and connect abstractions, was not understood by them
at all. Yet the genius of Plato and Greek philosophy reacted upon
the East, and a Greek element of thought and language overlaid
and partly reduced to order the chaos of Orientalism. And kindred
spirits, like St. Augustine, even though they were acquainted
with his writings only through the medium of a Latin translation,
were profoundly affected by them, seeming to find ‘God and his
word everywhere insinuated’ in them (August. Confess.)
There is no danger of the modern commentators on the Timaeus
falling into the absurdities of the Neo-Platonists. In the
present day we are well aware that an ancient philosopher is to
be interpreted from himself and by the contemporary history of
thought. We know that mysticism is not criticism. The fancies of
the Neo-Platonists are only interesting to us because they
exhibit a phase of the human mind which prevailed widely in the
first centuries of the Christian era, and is not wholly extinct
in our own day. But they have nothing to do with the
interpretation of Plato, and in spirit they are opposed to him.
They are the feeble expression of an age which has lost the power
not only of creating great works, but of understanding them. They
are the spurious birth of a marriage between philosophy and
tradition, between Hellas and the East—(Greek) (Rep.). Whereas
the so-called mysticism of Plato is purely Greek, arising out of
his imperfect knowledge and high aspirations, and is the growth
of an age in which philosophy is not wholly separated from poetry
and mythology.
A greater danger with modern interpreters of Plato is the
tendency to regard the Timaeus as the centre of his system. We do
not know how Plato would have arranged his own dialogues, or
whether the thought of arranging any of them, besides the two
‘Trilogies’ which he has expressly connected; was ever present to
his mind. But, if he had arranged them, there are many
indications that this is not the place which he would have
assigned to the Timaeus. We observe, first of all, that the
dialogue is put into the mouth of a Pythagorean philosopher, and
not of Socrates. And this is required by dramatic propriety; for
the investigation of nature was expressly renounced by Socrates
in the Phaedo. Nor does Plato himself attribute any importance to
his guesses at science. He is not at all absorbed by them, as he
is by the IDEA of good. He is modest and hesitating, and
confesses that his words partake of the uncertainty of the
subject (Tim.). The dialogue is primarily concerned with the
animal creation, including under this term the heavenly bodies,
and with man only as one among the animals. But we can hardly
suppose that Plato would have preferred the study of nature to
man, or that he would have deemed the formation of the world and
the human frame to have the same interest which he ascribes to
the mystery of being and not-being, or to the great political
problems which he discusses in the Republic and the Laws. There
are no speculations on physics in the other dialogues of Plato,
and he himself regards the consideration of them as a rational
pastime only. He is beginning to feel the need of further
divisions of knowledge; and is becoming aware that besides
dialectic, mathematics, and the arts, there is another field
which has been hitherto unexplored by him. But he has not as yet
defined this intermediate territory which lies somewhere between
medicine and mathematics, and he would have felt that there was
as great an impiety in ranking theories of physics first in the
order of knowledge, as in placing the body before the soul.
It is true, however, that the Timaeus is by no means confined to
speculations on physics. The deeper foundations of the Platonic
philosophy, such as the nature of God, the distinction of the
sensible and intellectual, the great original conceptions of time
and space, also appear in it. They are found principally in the
first half of the dialogue. The construction of the heavens is
for the most part ideal; the cyclic year serves as the connection
between the world of absolute being and of generation, just as
the number of population in the Republic is the expression or
symbol of the transition from the ideal to the actual state. In
some passages we are uncertain whether we are reading a
description of astronomical facts or contemplating processes of
the human mind, or of that divine mind (Phil.) which in Plato is
hardly separable from it. The characteristics of man are
transferred to the world-animal, as for example when intelligence
and knowledge are said to be perfected by the circle of the Same,
and true opinion by the circle of the Other; and conversely the
motions of the world-animal reappear in man; its amorphous state
continues in the child, and in both disorder and chaos are
gradually succeeded by stability and order. It is not however to
passages like these that Plato is referring when he speaks of the
uncertainty of his subject, but rather to the composition of
bodies, to the relations of colours, the nature of diseases, and
the like, about which he truly feels the lamentable ignorance
prevailing in his own age.
We are led by Plato himself to regard the Timaeus, not as the
centre or inmost shrine of the edifice, but as a detached
building in a different style, framed, not after the Socratic,
but after some Pythagorean model. As in the Cratylus and
Parmenides, we are uncertain whether Plato is expressing his own
opinions, or appropriating and perhaps improving the
philosophical speculations of others. In all three dialogues he
is exerting his dramatic and imitative power; in the Cratylus
mingling a satirical and humorous purpose with true principles of
language; in the Parmenides overthrowing Megarianism by a sort of
ultra-Megarianism, which discovers contradictions in the one as
great as those which have been previously shown to exist in the
ideas. There is a similar uncertainty about the Timaeus; in the
first part he scales the heights of transcendentalism, in the
latter part he treats in a bald and superficial manner of the
functions and diseases of the human frame. He uses the thoughts
and almost the words of Parmenides when he discourses of being
and of essence, adopting from old religion into philosophy the
conception of God, and from the Megarians the IDEA of good. He
agrees with Empedocles and the Atomists in attributing the
greater differences of kinds to the figures of the elements and
their movements into and out of one another. With Heracleitus, he
acknowledges the perpetual flux; like Anaxagoras, he asserts the
predominance of mind, although admitting an element of necessity
which reason is incapable of subduing; like the Pythagoreans he
supposes the mystery of the world to be contained in number.
Many, if not all the elements of the Pre-Socratic philosophy are
included in the Timaeus. It is a composite or eclectic work of
imagination, in which Plato, without naming them, gathers up into
a kind of system the various elements of philosophy which
preceded him.
If we allow for the difference of subject, and for some growth in
Plato’s own mind, the discrepancy between the Timaeus and the
other dialogues will not appear to be great. It is probable that
the relation of the ideas to God or of God to the world was
differently conceived by him at different times of his life. In
all his later dialogues we observe a tendency in him to personify
mind or God, and he therefore naturally inclines to view creation
as the work of design. The creator is like a human artist who
frames in his mind a plan which he executes by the help of his
servants. Thus the language of philosophy which speaks of first
and second causes is crossed by another sort of phraseology: ‘God
made the world because he was good, and the demons ministered to
him.’ The Timaeus is cast in a more theological and less
philosophical mould than the other dialogues, but the same
general spirit is apparent; there is the same dualism or
opposition between the ideal and actual—the soul is prior to the
body, the intelligible and unseen to the visible and corporeal.
There is the same distinction between knowledge and opinion which
occurs in the Theaetetus and Republic, the same enmity to the
poets, the same combination of music and gymnastics. The doctrine
of transmigration is still held by him, as in the Phaedrus and
Republic; and the soul has a view of the heavens in a prior state
of being. The ideas also remain, but they have become types in
nature, forms of men, animals, birds, fishes. And the attribution
of evil to physical causes accords with the doctrine which he
maintains in the Laws respecting the involuntariness of vice.
The style and plan of the Timaeus differ greatly from that of any
other of the Platonic dialogues. The language is weighty, abrupt,
and in some passages sublime. But Plato has not the same mastery
over his instrument which he exhibits in the Phaedrus or
Symposium. Nothing can exceed the beauty or art of the
introduction, in which he is using words after his accustomed
manner. But in the rest of the work the power of language seems
to fail him, and the dramatic form is wholly given up. He could
write in one style, but not in another, and the Greek language
had not as yet been fashioned by any poet or philosopher to
describe physical phenomena. The early physiologists had
generally written in verse; the prose writers, like Democritus
and Anaxagoras, as far as we can judge from their fragments,
never attained to a periodic style. And hence we find the same
sort of clumsiness in the Timaeus of Plato which characterizes
the philosophical poem of Lucretius. There is a want of flow and
often a defect of rhythm; the meaning is sometimes obscure, and
there is a greater use of apposition and more of repetition than
occurs in Plato’s earlier writings. The sentences are less
closely connected and also more involved; the antecedents of
demonstrative and relative pronouns are in some cases remote and
perplexing. The greater frequency of participles and of absolute
constructions gives the effect of heaviness. The descriptive
portion of the Timaeus retains traces of the first Greek prose
composition; for the great master of language was speaking on a
theme with which he was imperfectly acquainted, and had no words
in which to express his meaning. The rugged grandeur of the
opening discourse of Timaeus may be compared with the more
harmonious beauty of a similar passage in the Phaedrus.
To the same cause we may attribute the want of plan. Plato had
not the command of his materials which would have enabled him to
produce a perfect work of art. Hence there are several new
beginnings and resumptions and formal or artificial connections;
we miss the ‘callida junctura’ of the earlier dialogues. His
speculations about the Eternal, his theories of creation, his
mathematical anticipations, are supplemented by desultory remarks
on the one immortal and the two mortal souls of man, on the
functions of the bodily organs in health and disease, on sight,
hearing, smell, taste, and touch. He soars into the heavens, and
then, as if his wings were suddenly clipped, he walks
ungracefully and with difficulty upon the earth. The greatest
things in the world, and the least things in man, are brought
within the compass of a short treatise. But the intermediate
links are missing, and we cannot be surprised that there should
be a want of unity in a work which embraces astronomy, theology,
physiology, and natural philosophy in a few pages.
It is not easy to determine how Plato’s cosmos may be presented
to the reader in a clearer and shorter form; or how we may supply
a thread of connexion to his ideas without giving greater
consistency to them than they possessed in his mind, or adding on
consequences which would never have occurred to him. For he has
glimpses of the truth, but no comprehensive or perfect vision.
There are isolated expressions about the nature of God which have
a wonderful depth and power; but we are not justified in assuming
that these had any greater significance to the mind of Plato than
language of a neutral and impersonal character... With a view to
the illustration of the Timaeus I propose to divide this
Introduction into sections, of which the first will contain an
outline of the dialogue: (2) I shall consider the aspects of
nature which presented themselves to Plato and his age, and the
elements of philosophy which entered into the conception of them:
(3) the theology and physics of the Timaeus, including the soul
of the world, the conception of time and space, and the
composition of the elements: (4) in the fourth section I shall
consider the Platonic astronomy, and the position of the earth.
There will remain, (5) the psychology, (6) the physiology of
Plato, and (7) his analysis of the senses to be briefly commented
upon: (8) lastly, we may examine in what points Plato approaches
or anticipates the discoveries of modern science.
Section 1.
Socrates begins the Timaeus with a summary of the Republic. He
lightly touches upon a few points,—the division of labour and
distribution of the citizens into classes, the double nature and
training of the guardians, the community of property and of women
and children. But he makes no mention of the second education, or
of the government of philosophers.
And now he desires to see the ideal State set in motion; he would
like to know how she behaved in some great struggle. But he is
unable to invent such a narrative himself; and he is afraid that
the poets are equally incapable; for, although he pretends to
have nothing to say against them, he remarks that they are a
tribe of imitators, who can only describe what they have seen.
And he fears that the Sophists, who are plentifully supplied with
graces of speech, in their erratic way of life having never had a
city or house of their own, may through want of experience err in
their conception of philosophers and statesmen. ‘And therefore to
you I turn, Timaeus, citizen of Locris, who are at once a
philosopher and a statesman, and to you, Critias, whom all
Athenians know to be similarly accomplished, and to Hermocrates,
who is also fitted by nature and education to share in our
discourse.’
HERMOCRATES: ‘We will do our best, and have been already
preparing; for on our way home, Critias told us of an ancient
tradition, which I wish, Critias, that you would repeat to
Socrates.’ ‘I will, if Timaeus approves.’ ‘I approve.’ Listen
then, Socrates, to a tale of Solon’s, who, being the friend of
Dropidas my great-grandfather, told it to my grandfather Critias,
and he told me. The narrative related to ancient famous actions
of the Athenian people, and to one especially, which I will
rehearse in honour of you and of the goddess. Critias when he
told this tale of the olden time, was ninety years old, I being
not more than ten. The occasion of the rehearsal was the day of
the Apaturia called the Registration of Youth, at which our
parents gave prizes for recitation. Some poems of Solon were
recited by the boys. They had not at that time gone out of
fashion, and the recital of them led some one to say, perhaps in
compliment to Critias, that Solon was not only the wisest of men
but also the best of poets. The old man brightened up at hearing
this, and said: Had Solon only had the leisure which was required
to complete the famous legend which he brought with him from
Egypt he would have been as distinguished as Homer and Hesiod.
‘And what was the subject of the poem?’ said the person who made
the remark. The subject was a very noble one; he described the
most famous action in which the Athenian people were ever
engaged. But the memory of their exploits has passed away owing
to the lapse of time and the extinction of the actors. ‘Tell us,’
said the other, ‘the whole story, and where Solon heard the
story.’ He replied—There is at the head of the Egyptian Delta,
where the river Nile divides, a city and district called Sais;
the city was the birthplace of King Amasis, and is under the
protection of the goddess Neith or Athene. The citizens have a
friendly feeling towards the Athenians, believing themselves to
be related to them. Hither came Solon, and was received with
honour; and here he first learnt, by conversing with the Egyptian
priests, how ignorant he and his countrymen were of antiquity.
Perceiving this, and with the view of eliciting information from
them, he told them the tales of Phoroneus and Niobe, and also of
Deucalion and Pyrrha, and he endeavoured to count the generations
which had since passed. Thereupon an aged priest said to him: ‘O
Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are ever young, and there is no old
man who is a Hellene.’ ‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘In mind,’
replied the priest, ‘I mean to say that you are children; there
is no opinion or tradition of knowledge among you which is white
with age; and I will tell you why. Like the rest of mankind you
have suffered from convulsions of nature, which are chiefly
brought about by the two great agencies of fire and water. The
former is symbolized in the Hellenic tale of young Phaethon who
drove his father’s horses the wrong way, and having burnt up the
earth was himself burnt up by a thunderbolt. For there occurs at
long intervals a derangement of the heavenly bodies, and then the
earth is destroyed by fire. At such times, and when fire is the
agent, those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore are safer
than those who dwell upon high and dry places, who in their turn
are safer when the danger is from water. Now the Nile is our
saviour from fire, and as there is little rain in Egypt, we are
not harmed by water; whereas in other countries, when a deluge
comes, the inhabitants are swept by the rivers into the sea. The
memorials which your own and other nations have once had of the
famous actions of mankind perish in the waters at certain
periods; and the rude survivors in the mountains begin again,
knowing nothing of the world before the flood. But in Egypt the
traditions of our own and other lands are by us registered for
ever in our temples. The genealogies which you have recited to us
out of your own annals, Solon, are a mere children’s story. For
in the first place, you remember one deluge only, and there were
many of them, and you know nothing of that fairest and noblest
race of which you are a seed or remnant. The memory of them was
lost, because there was no written voice among you. For in the
times before the great flood Athens was the greatest and best of
cities and did the noblest deeds and had the best constitution of
any under the face of heaven.’ Solon marvelled, and desired to be
informed of the particulars. ‘You are welcome to hear them,’ said
the priest, ‘both for your own sake and for that of the city, and
above all for the sake of the goddess who is the common foundress
of both our cities. Nine thousand years have elapsed since she
founded yours, and eight thousand since she founded ours, as our
annals record. Many laws exist among us which are the counterpart
of yours as they were in the olden time. I will briefly describe
them to you, and you shall read the account of them at your
leisure in the sacred registers. In the first place, there was a
caste of priests among the ancient Athenians, and another of
artisans; also castes of shepherds, hunters, and husbandmen, and
lastly of warriors, who, like the warriors of Egypt, were
separated from the rest, and carried shields and spears, a custom
which the goddess first taught you, and then the Asiatics, and we
among Asiatics first received from her. Observe again, what care
the law took in the pursuit of wisdom, searching out the deep
things of the world, and applying them to the use of man. The
spot of earth which the goddess chose had the best of climates,
and produced the wisest men; in no other was she herself, the
philosopher and warrior goddess, so likely to have votaries. And
there you dwelt as became the children of the gods, excelling all
men in virtue, and many famous actions are recorded of you. The
most famous of them all was the overthrow of the island of
Atlantis. This great island lay over against the Pillars of
Heracles, in extent greater than Libya and Asia put together, and
was the passage to other islands and to a great ocean of which
the Mediterranean sea was only the harbour; and within the
Pillars the empire of Atlantis reached in Europe to Tyrrhenia and
in Libya to Egypt. This mighty power was arrayed against Egypt
and Hellas and all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean.
Then your city did bravely, and won renown over the whole earth.
For at the peril of her own existence, and when the other
Hellenes had deserted her, she repelled the invader, and of her
own accord gave liberty to all the nations within the Pillars. A
little while afterwards there were great earthquakes and floods,
and your warrior race all sank into the earth; and the great
island of Atlantis also disappeared in the sea. This is the
explanation of the shallows which are found in that part of the
Atlantic ocean.’
Such was the tale, Socrates, which Critias heard from Solon; and
I noticed when listening to you yesterday, how close the
resemblance was between your city and citizens and the ancient
Athenian State. But I would not speak at the time, because I
wanted to refresh my memory. I had heard the old man when I was a
child, and though I could not remember the whole of our
yesterday’s discourse, I was able to recall every word of this,
which is branded into my mind; and I am prepared, Socrates, to
rehearse to you the entire narrative. The imaginary State which
you were describing may be identified with the reality of Solon,
and our antediluvian ancestors may be your citizens. ‘That is
excellent, Critias, and very appropriate to a Panathenaic
festival; the truth of the story is a great advantage.’ Then now
let me explain to you the order of our entertainment; first,
Timaeus, who is a natural philosopher, will speak of the origin
of the world, going down to the creation of man, and then I shall
receive the men whom he has created, and some of whom will have
been educated by you, and introduce them to you as the lost
Athenian citizens of whom the Egyptian record spoke. As the law
of Solon prescribes, we will bring them into court and
acknowledge their claims to citizenship. ‘I see,’ replied
Socrates, ‘that I shall be well entertained; and do you, Timaeus,
offer up a prayer and begin.’
TIMAEUS: All men who have any right feeling, at the beginning of
any enterprise, call upon the Gods; and he who is about to speak
of the origin of the universe has a special need of their aid.
May my words be acceptable to them, and may I speak in the manner
which will be most intelligible to you and will best express my
own meaning!
First, I must distinguish between that which always is and never
becomes and which is apprehended by reason and reflection, and
that which always becomes and never is and is conceived by
opinion with the help of sense. All that becomes and is created
is the work of a cause, and that is fair which the artificer
makes after an eternal pattern, but whatever is fashioned after a
created pattern is not fair. Is the world created or
uncreated?—that is the first question. Created, I reply, being
visible and tangible and having a body, and therefore sensible;
and if sensible, then created; and if created, made by a cause,
and the cause is the ineffable father of all things, who had
before him an eternal archetype. For to imagine that the
archetype was created would be blasphemy, seeing that the world
is the noblest of creations, and God is the best of causes. And
the world being thus created according to the eternal pattern is
the copy of something; and we may assume that words are akin to
the matter of which they speak. What is spoken of the unchanging
or intelligible must be certain and true; but what is spoken of
the created image can only be probable; being is to becoming what
truth is to belief. And amid the variety of opinions which have
arisen about God and the nature of the world we must be content
to take probability for our rule, considering that I, who am the
speaker, and you, who are the judges, are only men; to
probability we may attain but no further.
SOCRATES: Excellent, Timaeus, I like your manner of approaching
the subject—proceed.
TIMAEUS: Why did the Creator make the world?...He was good, and
therefore not jealous, and being free from jealousy he desired
that all things should be like himself. Wherefore he set in order
the visible world, which he found in disorder. Now he who is the
best could only create the fairest; and reflecting that of
visible things the intelligent is superior to the unintelligent,
he put intelligence in soul and soul in body, and framed the
universe to be the best and fairest work in the order of nature,
and the world became a living soul through the providence of God.
In the likeness of what animal was the world made?—that is the
third question...The form of the perfect animal was a whole, and
contained all intelligible beings, and the visible animal, made
after the pattern of this, included all visible creatures.
Are there many worlds or one only?—that is the fourth
question...One only. For if in the original there had been more
than one they would have been the parts of a third, which would
have been the true pattern of the world; and therefore there is,
and will ever be, but one created world. Now that which is
created is of necessity corporeal and visible and
tangible,—visible and therefore made of fire,—tangible and
therefore solid and made of earth. But two terms must be united
by a third, which is a mean between them; and had the earth been
a surface only, one mean would have sufficed, but two means are
required to unite solid bodies. And as the world was composed of
solids, between the elements of fire and earth God placed two
other elements of air and water, and arranged them in a
continuous proportion—
fire:air::air:water, and air:water::water:earth,
and so put together a visible and palpable heaven, having harmony
and friendship in the union of the four elements; and being at
unity with itself it was indissoluble except by the hand of the
framer. Each of the elements was taken into the universe whole
and entire; for he considered that the animal should be perfect
and one, leaving no remnants out of which another animal could be
created, and should also be free from old age and disease, which
are produced by the action of external forces. And as he was to
contain all things, he was made in the all-containing form of a
sphere, round as from a lathe and every way equidistant from the
centre, as was natural and suitable to him. He was finished and
smooth, having neither eyes nor ears, for there was nothing
without him which he could see or hear; and he had no need to
carry food to his mouth, nor was there air for him to breathe;
and he did not require hands, for there was nothing of which he
could take hold, nor feet, with which to walk. All that he did
was done rationally in and by himself, and he moved in a circle
turning within himself, which is the most intellectual of
motions; but the other six motions were wanting to him; wherefore
the universe had no feet or legs.
And so the thought of God made a God in the image of a perfect
body, having intercourse with himself and needing no other, but
in every part harmonious and self-contained and truly blessed.
The soul was first made by him—the elder to rule the younger; not
in the order in which our wayward fancy has led us to describe
them, but the soul first and afterwards the body. God took of the
unchangeable and indivisible and also of the divisible and
corporeal, and out of the two he made a third nature, essence,
which was in a mean between them, and partook of the same and the
other, the intractable nature of the other being compressed into
the same. Having made a compound of all the three, he proceeded
to divide the entire mass into portions related to one another in
the ratios of 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 8, 27, and proceeded to fill up the
double and triple intervals thus—
- over 1, 4/3, 3/2, - over 2, 8/3, 3, - over 4, 16/3, 6, - over 8:
- over 1, 3/2, 2, - over 3, 9/2, 6, - over 9, 27/2, 18, - over 27;
in which double series of numbers are two kinds of means; the one
exceeds and is exceeded by equal parts of the extremes, e.g. 1,
4/3, 2; the other kind of mean is one which is equidistant from
the extremes—2, 4, 6. In this manner there were formed intervals
of thirds, 3:2, of fourths, 4:3, and of ninths, 9:8. And next he
filled up the intervals of a fourth with ninths, leaving a
remnant which is in the ratio of 256:243. The entire compound was
divided by him lengthways into two parts, which he united at the
centre like the letter X, and bent into an inner and outer circle
or sphere, cutting one another again at a point over against the
point at which they cross. The outer circle or sphere was named
the sphere of the same—the inner, the sphere of the other or
diverse; and the one revolved horizontally to the right, the
other diagonally to the left. To the sphere of the same which was
undivided he gave dominion, but the sphere of the other or
diverse was distributed into seven unequal orbits, having
intervals in ratios of twos and threes, three of either sort, and
he bade the orbits move in opposite directions to one
another—three of them, the Sun, Mercury, Venus, with equal
swiftness, and the remaining four—the Moon, Saturn, Mars,
Jupiter, with unequal swiftness to the three and to one another,
but all in due proportion.
When the Creator had made the soul he made the body within her;
and the soul interfused everywhere from the centre to the
circumference of heaven, herself turning in herself, began a
divine life of rational and everlasting motion. The body of
heaven is visible, but the soul is invisible, and partakes of
reason and harmony, and is the best of creations, being the work
of the best. And being composed of the same, the other, and the
essence, these three, and also divided and bound in harmonical
proportion, and revolving within herself—the soul when touching
anything which has essence, whether divided or undivided, is
stirred to utter the sameness or diversity of that and some other
thing, and to tell how and when and where individuals are
affected or related, whether in the world of change or of
essence. When reason is in the neighbourhood of sense, and the
circle of the other or diverse is moving truly, then arise true
opinions and beliefs; when reason is in the sphere of thought,
and the circle of the same runs smoothly, then intelligence is
perfected.
When the Father who begat the world saw the image which he had
made of the Eternal Gods moving and living, he rejoiced; and in
his joy resolved, since the archetype was eternal, to make the
creature eternal as far as this was possible. Wherefore he made
an image of eternity which is time, having an uniform motion
according to number, parted into months and days and years, and
also having greater divisions of past, present, and future. These
all apply to becoming in time, and have no meaning in relation to
the eternal nature, which ever is and never was or will be; for
the unchangeable is never older or younger, and when we say that
he ‘was’ or ‘will be,’ we are mistaken, for these words are
applicable only to becoming, and not to true being; and equally
wrong are we in saying that what has become IS become and that
what becomes IS becoming, and that the non-existent IS
non-existent...These are the forms of time which imitate eternity
and move in a circle measured by number.
Thus was time made in the image of the eternal nature; and it was
created together with the heavens, in order that if they were
dissolved, it might perish with them. And God made the sun and
moon and five other wanderers, as they are called, seven in all,
and to each of them he gave a body moving in an orbit, being one
of the seven orbits into which the circle of the other was
divided. He put the moon in the orbit which was nearest to the
earth, the sun in that next, the morning star and Mercury in the
orbits which move opposite to the sun but with equal
swiftness—this being the reason why they overtake and are
overtaken by one another. All these bodies became living
creatures, and learnt their appointed tasks, and began to move,
the nearer more swiftly, the remoter more slowly, according to
the diagonal movement of the other. And since this was controlled
by the movement of the same, the seven planets in their courses
appeared to describe spirals; and that appeared fastest which was
slowest, and that which overtook others appeared to be overtaken
by them. And God lighted a fire in the second orbit from the
earth which is called the sun, to give light over the whole
heaven, and to teach intelligent beings that knowledge of number
which is derived from the revolution of the same. Thus arose day
and night, which are the periods of the most intelligent nature;
a month is created by the revolution of the moon, a year by that
of the sun. Other periods of wonderful length and complexity are
not observed by men in general; there is moreover a cycle or
perfect year at the completion of which they all meet and
coincide...To this end the stars came into being, that the
created heaven might imitate the eternal nature.
Thus far the universal animal was made in the divine image, but
the other animals were not as yet included in him. And God
created them according to the patterns or species of them which
existed in the divine original. There are four of them: one of
gods, another of birds, a third of fishes, and a fourth of
animals. The gods were made in the form of a circle, which is the
most perfect figure and the figure of the universe. They were
created chiefly of fire, that they might be bright, and were made
to know and follow the best, and to be scattered over the
heavens, of which they were to be the glory. Two kinds of motion
were assigned to them—first, the revolution in the same and
around the same, in peaceful unchanging thought of the same; and
to this was added a forward motion which was under the control of
the same. Thus then the fixed stars were created, being divine
and eternal animals, revolving on the same spot, and the
wandering stars, in their courses, were created in the manner
already described. The earth, which is our nurse, clinging around
the pole extended through the universe, he made to be the
guardian and artificer of night and day, first and eldest of gods
that are in the interior of heaven. Vain would be the labour of
telling all the figures of them, moving as in dance, and their
juxta-positions and approximations, and when and where and behind
what other stars they appear to disappear—to tell of all this
without looking at a plan of them would be labour in vain.
The knowledge of the other gods is beyond us, and we can only
accept the traditions of the ancients, who were the children of
the gods, as they said; for surely they must have known their own
ancestors. Although they give no proof, we must believe them as
is customary. They tell us that Oceanus and Tethys were the
children of Earth and Heaven; that Phoreys, Cronos, and Rhea came
in the next generation, and were followed by Zeus and Here, whose
brothers and children are known to everybody.
When all of them, both those who show themselves in the sky, and
those who retire from view, had come into being, the Creator
addressed them thus:—‘Gods, sons of gods, my works, if I will,
are indissoluble. That which is bound may be dissolved, but only
an evil being would dissolve that which is harmonious and happy.
And although you are not immortal you shall not die, for I will
hold you together. Hear me, then:—Three tribes of mortal beings
have still to be created, but if created by me they would be like
gods. Do ye therefore make them; I will implant in them the seed
of immortality, and you shall weave together the mortal and
immortal, and provide food for them, and receive them again in
death.’ Thus he spake, and poured the remains of the elements
into the cup in which he had mingled the soul of the universe.
They were no longer pure as before, but diluted; and the mixture
he distributed into souls equal in number to the stars, and
assigned each to a star—then having mounted them, as in a
chariot, he showed them the nature of the universe, and told them
of their future birth and human lot. They were to be sown in the
planets, and out of them was to come forth the most religious of
animals, which would hereafter be called man. The souls were to
be implanted in bodies, which were in a perpetual flux, whence,
he said, would arise, first, sensation; secondly, love, which is
a mixture of pleasure and pain; thirdly, fear and anger, and the
opposite affections: and if they conquered these, they would live
righteously, but if they were conquered by them, unrighteously.
He who lived well would return to his native star, and would
there have a blessed existence; but, if he lived ill, he would
pass into the nature of a woman, and if he did not then alter his
evil ways, into the likeness of some animal, until the reason
which was in him reasserted her sway over the elements of fire,
air, earth, water, which had engrossed her, and he regained his
first and better nature. Having given this law to his creatures,
that he might be guiltless of their future evil, he sowed them,
some in the earth, some in the moon, and some in the other
planets; and he ordered the younger gods to frame human bodies
for them and to make the necessary additions to them, and to
avert from them all but self-inflicted evil.
Having given these commands, the Creator remained in his own
nature. And his children, receiving from him the immortal
principle, borrowed from the world portions of earth, air, fire,
water, hereafter to be returned, which they fastened together,
not with the adamantine bonds which bound themselves, but by
little invisible pegs, making each separate body out of all the
elements, subject to influx and efflux, and containing the
courses of the soul. These swelling and surging as in a river
moved irregularly and irrationally in all the six possible ways,
forwards, backwards, right, left, up and down. But violent as
were the internal and alimentary fluids, the tide became still
more violent when the body came into contact with flaming fire,
or the solid earth, or gliding waters, or the stormy wind; the
motions produced by these impulses pass through the body to the
soul and have the name of sensations. Uniting with the
ever-flowing current, they shake the courses of the soul,
stopping the revolution of the same and twisting in all sorts of
ways the nature of the other, and the harmonical ratios of twos
and threes and the mean terms which connect them, until the
circles are bent and disordered and their motion becomes
irregular. You may imagine a position of the body in which the
head is resting upon the ground, and the legs are in the air, and
the top is bottom and the left right. And something similar
happens when the disordered motions of the soul come into contact
with any external thing; they say the same or the other in a
manner which is the very opposite of the truth, and they are
false and foolish, and have no guiding principle in them. And
when external impressions enter in, they are really conquered,
though they seem to conquer.
By reason of these affections the soul is at first without
intelligence, but as time goes on the stream of nutriment abates,
and the courses of the soul regain their proper motion, and
apprehend the same and the other rightly, and become rational.
The soul of him who has education is whole and perfect and
escapes the worst disease, but, if a man’s education be
neglected, he walks lamely through life and returns good for
nothing to the world below. This, however, is an after-stage—at
present, we are only concerned with the creation of the body and
soul.
The two divine courses were encased by the gods in a sphere which
is called the head, and is the god and lord of us. And to this
they gave the body to be a vehicle, and the members to be
instruments, having the power of flexion and extension. Such was
the origin of legs and arms. In the next place, the gods gave a
forward motion to the human body, because the front part of man
was the more honourable and had authority. And they put in a face
in which they inserted organs to minister in all things to the
providence of the soul. They first contrived the eyes, into which
they conveyed a light akin to the light of day, making it flow
through the pupils. When the light of the eye is surrounded by
the light of day, then like falls upon like, and they unite and
form one body which conveys to the soul the motions of visible
objects. But when the visual ray goes forth into the darkness,
then unlike falls upon unlike—the eye no longer sees, and we go
to sleep. The fire or light, when kept in by the eyelids,
equalizes the inward motions, and there is rest accompanied by
few dreams; only when the greater motions remain they engender in
us corresponding visions of the night. And now we shall be able
to understand the nature of reflections in mirrors. The fires
from within and from without meet about the smooth and bright
surface of the mirror; and because they meet in a manner contrary
to the usual mode, the right and left sides of the object are
transposed. In a concave mirror the top and bottom are inverted,
but this is no transposition.
These are the second causes which God used as his ministers in
fashioning the world. They are thought by many to be the prime
causes, but they are not so; for they are destitute of mind and
reason, and the lover of mind will not allow that there are any
prime causes other than the rational and invisible ones—these he
investigates first, and afterwards the causes of things which are
moved by others, and which work by chance and without order. Of
the second or concurrent causes of sight I have already spoken,
and I will now speak of the higher purpose of God in giving us
eyes. Sight is the source of the greatest benefits to us; for if
our eyes had never seen the sun, stars, and heavens, the words
which we have spoken would not have been uttered. The sight of
them and their revolutions has given us the knowledge of number
and time, the power of enquiry, and philosophy, which is the
great blessing of human life; not to speak of the lesser benefits
which even the vulgar can appreciate. God gave us the faculty of
sight that we might behold the order of the heavens and create a
corresponding order in our own erring minds. To the like end the
gifts of speech and hearing were bestowed upon us; not for the
sake of irrational pleasure, but in order that we might harmonize
the courses of the soul by sympathy with the harmony of sound,
and cure ourselves of our irregular and graceless ways.
Thus far we have spoken of the works of mind; and there are other
works done from necessity, which we must now place beside them;
for the creation is made up of both, mind persuading necessity as
far as possible to work out good. Before the heavens there
existed fire, air, water, earth, which we suppose men to know,
though no one has explained their nature, and we erroneously
maintain them to be the letters or elements of the whole,
although they cannot reasonably be compared even to syllables or
first compounds. I am not now speaking of the first principles of
things, because I cannot discover them by our present mode of
enquiry. But as I observed the rule of probability at first, I
will begin anew, seeking by the grace of God to observe it still.
In our former discussion I distinguished two kinds of being—the
unchanging or invisible, and the visible or changing. But now a
third kind is required, which I shall call the receptacle or
nurse of generation. There is a difficulty in arriving at an
exact notion of this third kind, because the four elements
themselves are of inexact natures and easily pass into one
another, and are too transient to be detained by any one name;
wherefore we are compelled to speak of water or fire, not as
substances, but as qualities. They may be compared to images made
of gold, which are continually assuming new forms. Somebody asks
what they are; if you do not know, the safest answer is to reply
that they are gold. In like manner there is a universal nature
out of which all things are made, and which is like none of them;
but they enter into and pass out of her, and are made after
patterns of the true in a wonderful and inexplicable manner. The
containing principle may be likened to a mother, the source or
spring to a father, the intermediate nature to a child; and we
may also remark that the matter which receives every variety of
form must be formless, like the inodorous liquids which are
prepared to receive scents, or the smooth and soft materials on
which figures are impressed. In the same way space or matter is
neither earth nor fire nor air nor water, but an invisible and
formless being which receives all things, and in an
incomprehensible manner partakes of the intelligible. But we may
say, speaking generally, that fire is that part of this nature
which is inflamed, water that which is moistened, and the like.
Let me ask a question in which a great principle is involved: Is
there an essence of fire and the other elements, or are there
only fires visible to sense? I answer in a word: If mind is one
thing and true opinion another, then there are self-existent
essences; but if mind is the same with opinion, then the visible
and corporeal is most real. But they are not the same, and they
have a different origin and nature. The one comes to us by
instruction, the other by persuasion, the one is rational, the
other is irrational; the one is movable by persuasion, the other
immovable; the one is possessed by every man, the other by the
gods and by very few men. And we must acknowledge that as there
are two kinds of knowledge, so there are two kinds of being
corresponding to them; the one uncreated, indestructible,
immovable, which is seen by intelligence only; the other created,
which is always becoming in place and vanishing out of place, and
is apprehended by opinion and sense. There is also a third
nature—that of space, which is indestructible, and is perceived
by a kind of spurious reason without the help of sense. This is
presented to us in a dreamy manner, and yet is said to be
necessary, for we say that all things must be somewhere in space.
For they are the images of other things and must therefore have a
separate existence and exist in something (i.e. in space). But
true reason assures us that while two things (i.e. the idea and
the image) are different they cannot inhere in one another, so as
to be one and two at the same time.
To sum up: Being and generation and space, these three, existed
before the heavens, and the nurse or vessel of generation,
moistened by water and inflamed by fire, and taking the forms of
air and earth, assumed various shapes. By the motion of the
vessel, the elements were divided, and like grain winnowed by
fans, the close and heavy particles settled in one place, the
light and airy ones in another. At first they were without reason
and measure, and had only certain faint traces of themselves,
until God fashioned them by figure and number. In this, as in
every other part of creation, I suppose God to have made things,
as far as was possible, fair and good, out of things not fair and
good.
And now I will explain to you the generation of the world by a
method with which your scientific training will have made you
familiar. Fire, air, earth, and water are bodies and therefore
solids, and solids are contained in planes, and plane rectilinear
figures are made up of triangles. Of triangles there are two
kinds; one having the opposite sides equal (isosceles), the other
with unequal sides (scalene). These we may fairly assume to be
the original elements of fire and the other bodies; what
principles are prior to these God only knows, and he of men whom
God loves. Next, we must determine what are the four most
beautiful figures which are unlike one another and yet sometimes
capable of resolution into one another...Of the two kinds of
triangles the equal-sided has but one form, the unequal-sided has
an infinite variety of forms; and there is none more beautiful
than that which forms the half of an equilateral triangle. Let us
then choose two triangles; one, the isosceles, the other, that
form of scalene which has the square of the longer side three
times as great as the square of the lesser side; and affirm that,
out of these, fire and the other elements have been constructed.
I was wrong in imagining that all the four elements could be
generated into and out of one another. For as they are formed,
three of them from the triangle which has the sides unequal, the
fourth from the triangle which has equal sides, three can be
resolved into one another, but the fourth cannot be resolved into
them nor they into it. So much for their passage into one
another: I must now speak of their construction. From the
triangle of which the hypotenuse is twice the lesser side the
three first regular solids are formed—first, the equilateral
pyramid or tetrahedron; secondly, the octahedron; thirdly, the
icosahedron; and from the isosceles triangle is formed the cube.
And there is a fifth figure (which is made out of twelve
pentagons), the dodecahedron—this God used as a model for the
twelvefold division of the Zodiac.
Let us now assign the geometrical forms to their respective
elements. The cube is the most stable of them because resting on
a quadrangular plane surface, and composed of isosceles
triangles. To the earth then, which is the most stable of bodies
and the most easily modelled of them, may be assigned the form of
a cube; and the remaining forms to the other elements,—to fire
the pyramid, to air the octahedron, and to water the
icosahedron,—according to their degrees of lightness or heaviness
or power, or want of power, of penetration. The single particles
of any of the elements are not seen by reason of their smallness;
they only become visible when collected. The ratios of their
motions, numbers, and other properties, are ordered by the God,
who harmonized them as far as necessity permitted.
The probable conclusion is as follows:—Earth, when dissolved by
the more penetrating element of fire, whether acting immediately
or through the medium of air or water, is decomposed but not
transformed. Water, when divided by fire or air, becomes one part
fire, and two parts air. A volume of air divided becomes two of
fire. On the other hand, when condensed, two volumes of fire make
a volume of air; and two and a half parts of air condense into
one of water. Any element which is fastened upon by fire is cut
by the sharpness of the triangles, until at length, coalescing
with the fire, it is at rest; for similars are not affected by
similars. When two kinds of bodies quarrel with one another, then
the tendency to decomposition continues until the smaller either
escapes to its kindred element or becomes one with its conqueror.
And this tendency in bodies to condense or escape is a source of
motion...Where there is motion there must be a mover, and where
there is a mover there must be something to move. These cannot
exist in what is uniform, and therefore motion is due to want of
uniformity. But then why, when things are divided after their
kinds, do they not cease from motion? The answer is, that the
circular motion of all things compresses them, and as ‘nature
abhors a vacuum,’ the finer and more subtle particles of the
lighter elements, such as fire and air, are thrust into the
interstices of the larger, each of them penetrating according to
their rarity, and thus all the elements are on their way up and
down everywhere and always into their own places. Hence there is
a principle of inequality, and therefore of motion, in all time.
In the next place, we may observe that there are different kinds
of fire—(1) flame, (2) light that burns not, (3) the red heat of
the embers of fire. And there are varieties of air, as for
example, the pure aether, the opaque mist, and other nameless
forms. Water, again, is of two kinds, liquid and fusile. The
liquid is composed of small and unequal particles, the fusile of
large and uniform particles and is more solid, but nevertheless
melts at the approach of fire, and then spreads upon the earth.
When the substance cools, the fire passes into the air, which is
displaced, and forces together and condenses the liquid mass.
This process is called cooling and congealment. Of the fusile
kinds the fairest and heaviest is gold; this is hardened by
filtration through rock, and is of a bright yellow colour. A
shoot of gold which is darker and denser than the rest is called
adamant. Another kind is called copper, which is harder and yet
lighter because the interstices are larger than in gold. There is
mingled with it a fine and small portion of earth which comes out
in the form of rust. These are a few of the conjectures which
philosophy forms, when, leaving the eternal nature, she turns for
innocent recreation to consider the truths of generation.
Water which is mingled with fire is called liquid because it
rolls upon the earth, and soft because its bases give way. This
becomes more equable when separated from fire and air, and then
congeals into hail or ice, or the looser forms of hoar frost or
snow. There are other waters which are called juices and are
distilled through plants. Of these we may mention, first, wine,
which warms the soul as well as the body; secondly, oily
substances, as for example, oil or pitch; thirdly, honey, which
relaxes the contracted parts of the mouth and so produces
sweetness; fourthly, vegetable acid, which is frothy and has a
burning quality and dissolves the flesh. Of the kinds of earth,
that which is filtered through water passes into stone; the water
is broken up by the earth and escapes in the form of air—this in
turn presses upon the mass of earth, and the earth, compressed
into an indissoluble union with the remaining water, becomes
rock. Rock, when it is made up of equal particles, is fair and
transparent, but the reverse when of unequal. Earth is converted
into pottery when the watery part is suddenly drawn away; or if
moisture remains, the earth, when fused by fire, becomes, on
cooling, a stone of a black colour. When the earth is finer and
of a briny nature then two half-solid bodies are formed by
separating the water,—soda and salt. The strong compounds of
earth and water are not soluble by water, but only by fire. Earth
itself, when not consolidated, is dissolved by water; when
consolidated, by fire only. The cohesion of water, when strong,
is dissolved by fire only; when weak, either by air or fire, the
former entering the interstices, the latter penetrating even the
triangles. Air when strongly condensed is indissoluble by any
power which does not reach the triangles, and even when not
strongly condensed is only resolved by fire. Compounds of earth
and water are unaffected by water while the water occupies the
interstices in them, but begin to liquefy when fire enters into
the interstices of the water. They are of two kinds, some of
them, like glass, having more earth, others, like wax, having
more water in them.
Having considered objects of sense, we now pass on to sensation.
But we cannot explain sensation without explaining the nature of
flesh and of the mortal soul; and as we cannot treat of both
together, in order that we may proceed at once to the sensations
we must assume the existence of body and soul.
What makes fire burn? The fineness of the sides, the sharpness of
the angles, the smallness of the particles, the quickness of the
motion. Moreover, the pyramid, which is the figure of fire, is
more cutting than any other. The feeling of cold is produced by
the larger particles of moisture outside the body trying to eject
the smaller ones in the body which they compress. The struggle
which arises between elements thus unnaturally brought together
causes shivering. That is hard to which the flesh yields, and
soft which yields to the flesh, and these two terms are also
relative to one another. The yielding matter is that which has
the slenderest base, whereas that which has a rectangular base is
compact and repellent. Light and heavy are wrongly explained with
reference to a lower and higher in place. For in the universe,
which is a sphere, there is no opposition of above or below, and
that which is to us above would be below to a man standing at the
antipodes. The greater or less difficulty in detaching any
element from its like is the real cause of heaviness or of
lightness. If you draw the earth into the dissimilar air, the
particles of earth cling to their native element, and you more
easily detach a small portion than a large. There would be the
same difficulty in moving any of the upper elements towards the
lower. The smooth and the rough are severally produced by the
union of evenness with compactness, and of hardness with
inequality.
Pleasure and pain are the most important of the affections common
to the whole body. According to our general doctrine of
sensation, parts of the body which are easily moved readily
transmit the motion to the mind; but parts which are not easily
moved have no effect upon the patient. The bones and hair are of
the latter kind, sight and hearing of the former. Ordinary
affections are neither pleasant nor painful. The impressions of
sight afford an example of these, and are neither violent nor
sudden. But sudden replenishments of the body cause pleasure, and
sudden disturbances, as for example cuttings and burnings, have
the opposite effect.
>From sensations common to the whole body, we proceed to those of
particular parts. The affections of the tongue appear to be
caused by contraction and dilation, but they have more of
roughness or smoothness than is found in other affections. Earthy
particles, entering into the small veins of the tongue which
reach to the heart, when they melt into and dry up the little
veins are astringent if they are rough; or if not so rough, they
are only harsh, and if excessively abstergent, like potash and
soda, bitter. Purgatives of a weaker sort are called salt and,
having no bitterness, are rather agreeable. Inflammatory bodies,
which by their lightness are carried up into the head, cutting
all that comes in their way, are termed pungent. But when these
are refined by putrefaction, and enter the narrow veins of the
tongue, and meet there particles of earth and air, two kinds of
globules are formed—one of earthy and impure liquid, which boils
and ferments, the other of pure and transparent water, which are
called bubbles; of all these affections the cause is termed acid.
When, on the other hand, the composition of the deliquescent
particles is congenial to the tongue, and disposes the parts
according to their nature, this remedial power in them is called
sweet.
Smells are not divided into kinds; all of them are transitional,
and arise out of the decomposition of one element into another,
for the simple air or water is without smell. They are vapours or
mists, thinner than water and thicker than air: and hence in
drawing in the breath, when there is an obstruction, the air
passes, but there is no smell. They have no names, but are
distinguished as pleasant and unpleasant, and their influence
extends over the whole region from the head to the navel.
Hearing is the effect of a stroke which is transmitted through
the ears by means of the air, brain, and blood to the soul,
beginning at the head and extending to the liver. The sound which
moves swiftly is acute; that which moves slowly is grave; that
which is uniform is smooth, and the opposite is harsh. Loudness
depends on the quantity of the sound. Of the harmony of sounds I
will hereafter speak.
Colours are flames which emanate from all bodies, having
particles corresponding to the sense of sight. Some of the
particles are less and some larger, and some are equal to the
parts of the sight. The equal particles appear transparent; the
larger contract, and the lesser dilate the sight. White is
produced by the dilation, black by the contraction, of the
particles of sight. There is also a swifter motion of another
sort of fire which forces a way through the passages of the eyes,
and elicits from them a union of fire and water which we call
tears. The inner fire flashes forth, and the outer finds a way in
and is extinguished in the moisture, and all sorts of colours are
generated by the mixture. This affection is termed by us
dazzling, and the object which produces it is called bright.
There is yet another sort of fire which mingles with the moisture
of the eye without flashing, and produces a colour like blood—to
this we give the name of red. A bright element mingling with red
and white produces a colour which we call auburn. The law of
proportion, however, according to which compound colours are
formed, cannot be determined scientifically or even probably.
Red, when mingled with black and white, gives a purple hue, which
becomes umber when the colours are burnt and there is a larger
admixture of black. Flame-colour is a mixture of auburn and dun;
dun of white and black; yellow of white and auburn. White and
bright meeting, and falling upon a full black, become dark blue;
dark blue mingling with white becomes a light blue; the union of
flame-colour and black makes leek-green. There is no difficulty
in seeing how other colours are probably composed. But he who
should attempt to test the truth of this by experiment, would
forget the difference of the human and divine nature. God only is
able to compound and resolve substances; such experiments are
impossible to man.
These are the elements of necessity which the Creator received in
the world of generation when he made the all-sufficient and
perfect creature, using the secondary causes as his ministers,
but himself fashioning the good in all things. For there are two
sorts of causes, the one divine, the other necessary; and we
should seek to discover the divine above all, and, for their
sake, the necessary, because without them the higher cannot be
attained by us.
Having now before us the causes out of which the rest of our
discourse is to be framed, let us go back to the point at which
we began, and add a fair ending to our tale. As I said at first,
all things were originally a chaos in which there was no order or
proportion. The elements of this chaos were arranged by the
Creator, and out of them he made the world. Of the divine he
himself was the author, but he committed to his offspring the
creation of the mortal. From him they received the immortal soul,
but themselves made the body to be its vehicle, and constructed
within another soul which was mortal, and subject to terrible
affections—pleasure, the inciter of evil; pain, which deters from
good; rashness and fear, foolish counsellors; anger hard to be
appeased; hope easily led astray. These they mingled with
irrational sense and all-daring love according to necessary laws
and so framed man. And, fearing to pollute the divine element,
they gave the mortal soul a separate habitation in the breast,
parted off from the head by a narrow isthmus. And as in a house
the women’s apartments are divided from the men’s, the cavity of
the thorax was divided into two parts, a higher and a lower. The
higher of the two, which is the seat of courage and anger, lies
nearer to the head, between the midriff and the neck, and assists
reason in restraining the desires. The heart is the house of
guard in which all the veins meet, and through them reason sends
her commands to the extremity of her kingdom. When the passions
are in revolt, or danger approaches from without, then the heart
beats and swells; and the creating powers, knowing this,
implanted in the body the soft and bloodless substance of the
lung, having a porous and springy nature like a sponge, and being
kept cool by drink and air which enters through the trachea.
The part of the soul which desires meat and drink was placed
between the midriff and navel, where they made a sort of manger;
and here they bound it down, like a wild animal, away from the
council-chamber, and leaving the better principle undisturbed to
advise quietly for the good of the whole. For the Creator knew
that the belly would not listen to reason, and was under the
power of idols and fancies. Wherefore he framed the liver to
connect with the lower nature, contriving that it should be
compact, and bright, and sweet, and also bitter and smooth, in
order that the power of thought which originates in the mind
might there be reflected, terrifying the belly with the elements
of bitterness and gall, and a suffusion of bilious colours when
the liver is contracted, and causing pain and misery by twisting
out of its place the lobe and closing up the vessels and gates.
And the converse happens when some gentle inspiration coming from
intelligence mirrors the opposite fancies, giving rest and
sweetness and freedom, and at night, moderation and peace
accompanied with prophetic insight, when reason and sense are
asleep. For the authors of our being, in obedience to their
Father’s will and in order to make men as good as they could,
gave to the liver the power of divination, which is never active
when men are awake or in health; but when they are under the
influence of some disorder or enthusiasm then they receive
intimations, which have to be interpreted by others who are
called prophets, but should rather be called interpreters of
prophecy; after death these intimations become unintelligible.
The spleen which is situated in the neighbourhood, on the left
side, keeps the liver bright and clean, as a napkin does a
mirror, and the evacuations of the liver are received into it;
and being a hollow tissue it is for a time swollen with these
impurities, but when the body is purged it returns to its natural
size.
The truth concerning the soul can only be established by the word
of God. Still, we may venture to assert what is probable both
concerning soul and body.
The creative powers were aware of our tendency to excess. And so
when they made the belly to be a receptacle for food, in order
that men might not perish by insatiable gluttony, they formed the
convolutions of the intestines, in this way retarding the passage
of food through the body, lest mankind should be absorbed in
eating and drinking, and the whole race become impervious to
divine philosophy.
The creation of bones and flesh was on this wise. The foundation
of these is the marrow which binds together body and soul, and
the marrow is made out of such of the primary triangles as are
adapted by their perfection to produce all the four elements.
These God took and mingled them in due proportion, making as many
kinds of marrow as there were hereafter to be kinds of souls. The
receptacle of the divine soul he made round, and called that
portion of the marrow brain, intending that the vessel containing
this substance should be the head. The remaining part he divided
into long and round figures, and to these as to anchors,
fastening the mortal soul, he proceeded to make the rest of the
body, first forming for both parts a covering of bone. The bone
was formed by sifting pure smooth earth and wetting it with
marrow. It was then thrust alternately into fire and water, and
thus rendered insoluble by either. Of bone he made a globe which
he placed around the brain, leaving a narrow opening, and around
the marrow of the neck and spine he formed the vertebrae, like
hinges, which extended from the head through the whole of the
trunk. And as the bone was brittle and liable to mortify and
destroy the marrow by too great rigidity and susceptibility to
heat and cold, he contrived sinews and flesh—the first to give
flexibility, the second to guard against heat and cold, and to be
a protection against falls, containing a warm moisture, which in
summer exudes and cools the body, and in winter is a defence
against cold. Having this in view, the Creator mingled earth with
fire and water and mixed with them a ferment of acid and salt, so
as to form pulpy flesh. But the sinews he made of a mixture of
bone and unfermented flesh, giving them a mean nature between the
two, and a yellow colour. Hence they were more glutinous than
flesh, but softer than bone. The bones which have most of the
living soul within them he covered with the thinnest film of
flesh, those which have least of it, he lodged deeper. At the
joints he diminished the flesh in order not to impede the flexure
of the limbs, and also to avoid clogging the perceptions of the
mind. About the thighs and arms, which have no sense because
there is little soul in the marrow, and about the inner bones, he
laid the flesh thicker. For where the flesh is thicker there is
less feeling, except in certain parts which the Creator has made
solely of flesh, as for example, the tongue. Had the combination
of solid bone and thick flesh been consistent with acute
perceptions, the Creator would have given man a sinewy and fleshy
head, and then he would have lived twice as long. But our
creators were of opinion that a shorter life which was better was
preferable to a longer which was worse, and therefore they
covered the head with thin bone, and placed the sinews at the
extremity of the head round the neck, and fastened the jawbones
to them below the face. And they framed the mouth, having teeth
and tongue and lips, with a view to the necessary and the good;
for food is a necessity, and the river of speech is the best of
rivers. Still, the head could not be left a bare globe of bone on
account of the extremes of heat and cold, nor be allowed to
become dull and senseless by an overgrowth of flesh. Wherefore it
was covered by a peel or skin which met and grew by the help of
the cerebral humour. The diversity of the sutures was caused by
the struggle of the food against the courses of the soul. The
skin of the head was pierced by fire, and out of the punctures
came forth a moisture, part liquid, and part of a skinny nature,
which was hardened by the pressure of the external cold and
became hair. And God gave hair to the head of man to be a light
covering, so that it might not interfere with his perceptions.
Nails were formed by combining sinew, skin, and bone, and were
made by the creators with a view to the future when, as they
knew, women and other animals who would require them would be
framed out of man.
The gods also mingled natures akin to that of man with other
forms and perceptions. Thus trees and plants were created, which
were originally wild and have been adapted by cultivation to our
use. They partake of that third kind of life which is seated
between the midriff and the navel, and is altogether passive and
incapable of reflection.
When the creators had furnished all these natures for our
sustenance, they cut channels through our bodies as in a garden,
watering them with a perennial stream. Two were cut down the
back, along the back bone, where the skin and flesh meet, one on
the right and the other on the left, having the marrow of
generation between them. In the next place, they divided the
veins about the head and interlaced them with each other in order
that they might form an additional link between the head and the
body, and that the sensations from both sides might be diffused
throughout the body. In the third place, they contrived the
passage of liquids, which may be explained in this way:—Finer
bodies retain coarser, but not the coarser the finer, and the
belly is capable of retaining food, but not fire and air. God
therefore formed a network of fire and air to irrigate the veins,
having within it two lesser nets, and stretched cords reaching
from both the lesser nets to the extremity of the outer net. The
inner parts of the net were made by him of fire, the lesser nets
and their cavities of air. The two latter he made to pass into
the mouth; the one ascending by the air-pipes from the lungs, the
other by the side of the air-pipes from the belly. The entrance
to the first he divided into two parts, both of which he made to
meet at the channels of the nose, that when the mouth was closed
the passage connected with it might still be fed with air. The
cavity of the network he spread around the hollows of the body,
making the entire receptacle to flow into and out of the lesser
nets and the lesser nets into and out of it, while the outer net
found a way into and out of the pores of the body, and the
internal heat followed the air to and fro. These, as we affirm,
are the phenomena of respiration. And all this process takes
place in order that the body may be watered and cooled and
nourished, and the meat and drink digested and liquefied and
carried into the veins.
The causes of respiration have now to be considered. The
exhalation of the breath through the mouth and nostrils displaces
the external air, and at the same time leaves a vacuum into which
through the pores the air which is displaced enters. Also the
vacuum which is made when the air is exhaled through the pores is
filled up by the inhalation of breath through the mouth and
nostrils. The explanation of this double phenomenon is as
follows:—Elements move towards their natural places. Now as every
animal has within him a fountain of fire, the air which is
inhaled through the mouth and nostrils, on coming into contact
with this, is heated; and when heated, in accordance with the law
of attraction, it escapes by the way it entered toward the place
of fire. On leaving the body it is cooled and drives round the
air which it displaces through the pores into the empty lungs.
This again is in turn heated by the internal fire and escapes, as
it entered, through the pores.
The phenomena of medical cupping-glasses, of swallowing, and of
the hurling of bodies, are to be explained on a similar
principle; as also sounds, which are sometimes discordant on
account of the inequality of them, and again harmonious by reason
of equality. The slower sounds reaching the swifter, when they
begin to pause, by degrees assimilate with them: whence arises a
pleasure which even the unwise feel, and which to the wise
becomes a higher sense of delight, being an imitation of divine
harmony in mortal motions. Streams flow, lightnings play, amber
and the magnet attract, not by reason of attraction, but because
‘nature abhors a vacuum,’ and because things, when compounded or
dissolved, move different ways, each to its own place.
I will now return to the phenomena of respiration. The fire,
entering the belly, minces the food, and as it escapes, fills the
veins by drawing after it the divided portions, and thus the
streams of nutriment are diffused through the body. The fruits or
herbs which are our daily sustenance take all sorts of colours
when intermixed, but the colour of red or fire predominates, and
hence the liquid which we call blood is red, being the nurturing
principle of the body, whence all parts are watered and empty
places filled.
The process of repletion and depletion is produced by the
attraction of like to like, after the manner of the universal
motion. The external elements by their attraction are always
diminishing the substance of the body: the particles of blood,
too, formed out of the newly digested food, are attracted towards
kindred elements within the body and so fill up the void. When
more is taken away than flows in, then we decay; and when less,
we grow and increase.
The young of every animal has the triangles new and closely
locked together, and yet the entire frame is soft and delicate,
being newly made of marrow and nurtured on milk. These triangles
are sharper than those which enter the body from without in the
shape of food, and therefore they cut them up. But as life
advances, the triangles wear out and are no longer able to
assimilate food; and at length, when the bonds which unite the
triangles of the marrow become undone, they in turn unloose the
bonds of the soul; and if the release be according to nature, she
then flies away with joy. For the death which is natural is
pleasant, but that which is caused by violence is painful.
Every one may understand the origin of diseases. They may be
occasioned by the disarrangement or disproportion of the elements
out of which the body is framed. This is the origin of many of
them, but the worst of all owe their severity to the following
causes: There is a natural order in the human frame according to
which the flesh and sinews are made of blood, the sinews out of
the fibres, and the flesh out of the congealed substance which is
formed by separation from the fibres. The glutinous matter which
comes away from the sinews and the flesh, not only binds the
flesh to the bones, but nourishes the bones and waters the
marrow. When these processes take place in regular order the body
is in health.
But when the flesh wastes and returns into the veins there is
discoloured blood as well as air in the veins, having acid and
salt qualities, from which is generated every sort of phlegm and
bile. All things go the wrong way and cease to give nourishment
to the body, no longer preserving their natural courses, but at
war with themselves and destructive to the constitution of the
body. The oldest part of the flesh which is hard to decompose
blackens from long burning, and from being corroded grows bitter,
and as the bitter element refines away, becomes acid. When tinged
with blood the bitter substance has a red colour, and this when
mixed with black takes the hue of grass; or again, the bitter
substance has an auburn colour, when new flesh is decomposed by
the internal flame. To all which phenomena some physician or
philosopher who was able to see the one in many has given the
name of bile. The various kinds of bile have names answering to
their colours. Lymph or serum is of two kinds: first, the whey of
blood, which is gentle; secondly, the secretion of dark and
bitter bile, which, when mingled under the influence of heat with
salt, is malignant and is called acid phlegm. There is also white
phlegm, formed by the decomposition of young and tender flesh,
and covered with little bubbles, separately invisible, but
becoming visible when collected. The water of tears and
perspiration and similar substances is also the watery part of
fresh phlegm. All these humours become sources of disease when
the blood is replenished in irregular ways and not by food or
drink. The danger, however, is not so great when the foundation
remains, for then there is a possibility of recovery. But when
the substance which unites the flesh and bones is diseased, and
is no longer renewed from the muscles and sinews, and instead of
being oily and smooth and glutinous becomes rough and salt and
dry, then the fleshy parts fall away and leave the sinews bare
and full of brine, and the flesh gets back again into the
circulation of the blood, and makes the previously mentioned
disorders still greater. There are other and worse diseases which
are prior to these; as when the bone through the density of the
flesh does not receive sufficient air, and becomes stagnant and
gangrened, and crumbling away passes into the food, and the food
into the flesh, and the flesh returns again into the blood. Worst
of all and most fatal is the disease of the marrow, by which the
whole course of the body is reversed. There is a third class of
diseases which are produced, some by wind and some by phlegm and
some by bile. When the lung, which is the steward of the air, is
obstructed, by rheums, and in one part no air, and in another too
much, enters in, then the parts which are unrefreshed by air
corrode, and other parts are distorted by the excess of air; and
in this manner painful diseases are produced. The most painful
are caused by wind generated within the body, which gets about
the great sinews of the shoulders—these are termed tetanus. The
cure of them is difficult, and in most cases they are relieved
only by fever. White phlegm, which is dangerous if kept in, by
reason of the air bubbles, is not equally dangerous if able to
escape through the pores, although it variegates the body,
generating diverse kinds of leprosies. If, when mingled with
black bile, it disturbs the courses of the head in sleep, there
is not so much danger; but if it assails those who are awake,
then the attack is far more dangerous, and is called epilepsy or
the sacred disease. Acid and salt phlegm is the source of
catarrh.
Inflammations originate in bile, which is sometimes relieved by
boils and swellings, but when detained, and above all when
mingled with pure blood, generates many inflammatory disorders,
disturbing the position of the fibres which are scattered about
in the blood in order to maintain the balance of rare and dense
which is necessary to its regular circulation. If the bile, which
is only stale blood, or liquefied flesh, comes in little by
little, it is congealed by the fibres and produces internal cold
and shuddering. But when it enters with more of a flood it
overcomes the fibres by its heat and reaches the spinal marrow,
and burning up the cables of the soul sets her free from the
body. When on the other hand the body, though wasted, still holds
out, then the bile is expelled, like an exile from a factious
state, causing associating diarrhoeas and dysenteries and similar
disorders. The body which is diseased from the effects of fire is
in a continual fever; when air is the agent, the fever is
quotidian; when water, the fever intermits a day; when earth,
which is the most sluggish element, the fever intermits three
days and is with difficulty shaken off.
Of mental disorders there are two sorts, one madness, the other
ignorance, and they may be justly attributed to disease.
Excessive pleasures or pains are among the greatest diseases, and
deprive men of their senses. When the seed about the spinal
marrow is too abundant, the body has too great pleasures and
pains; and during a great part of his life he who is the subject
of them is more or less mad. He is often thought bad, but this is
a mistake; for the truth is that the intemperance of lust is due
to the fluidity of the marrow produced by the loose consistency
of the bones. And this is true of vice in general, which is
commonly regarded as disgraceful, whereas it is really
involuntary and arises from a bad habit of the body and evil
education. In like manner the soul is often made vicious by the
influence of bodily pain; the briny phlegm and other bitter and
bilious humours wander over the body and find no exit, but are
compressed within, and mingle their own vapours with the motions
of the soul, and are carried to the three places of the soul,
creating infinite varieties of trouble and melancholy, of
rashness and cowardice, of forgetfulness and stupidity. When men
are in this evil plight of body, and evil forms of government and
evil discourses are superadded, and there is no education to save
them, they are corrupted through two causes; but of neither of
them are they really the authors. For the planters are to blame
rather than the plants, the educators and not the educated.
Still, we should endeavour to attain virtue and avoid vice; but
this is part of another subject.
Enough of disease—I have now to speak of the means by which the
mind and body are to be preserved, a higher theme than the other.
The good is the beautiful, and the beautiful is the symmetrical,
and there is no greater or fairer symmetry than that of body and
soul, as the contrary is the greatest of deformities. A leg or an
arm too long or too short is at once ugly and unserviceable, and
the same is true if body and soul are disproportionate. For a
strong and impassioned soul may ‘fret the pigmy body to decay,’
and so produce convulsions and other evils. The violence of
controversy, or the earnestness of enquiry, will often generate
inflammations and rheums which are not understood, or assigned to
their true cause by the professors of medicine. And in like
manner the body may be too much for the soul, darkening the
reason, and quickening the animal desires. The only security is
to preserve the balance of the two, and to this end the
mathematician or philosopher must practise gymnastics, and the
gymnast must cultivate music. The parts of the body too must be
treated in the same way—they should receive their appropriate
exercise. For the body is set in motion when it is heated and
cooled by the elements which enter in, or is dried up and
moistened by external things; and, if given up to these processes
when at rest, it is liable to destruction. But the natural
motion, as in the world, so also in the human frame, produces
harmony and divides hostile powers. The best exercise is the
spontaneous motion of the body, as in gymnastics, because most
akin to the motion of mind; not so good is the motion of which
the source is in another, as in sailing or riding; least good
when the body is at rest and the motion is in parts only, which
is a species of motion imparted by physic. This should only be
resorted to by men of sense in extreme cases; lesser diseases are
not to be irritated by medicine. For every disease is akin to the
living being and has an appointed term, just as life has, which
depends on the form of the triangles, and cannot be protracted
when they are worn out. And he who, instead of accepting his
destiny, endeavours to prolong his life by medicine, is likely to
multiply and magnify his diseases. Regimen and not medicine is
the true cure, when a man has time at his disposal.
Enough of the nature of man and of the body, and of training and
education. The subject is a great one and cannot be adequately
treated as an appendage to another. To sum up all in a word:
there are three kinds of soul located within us, and any one of
them, if remaining inactive, becomes very weak; if exercised,
very strong. Wherefore we should duly train and exercise all
three kinds.
The divine soul God lodged in the head, to raise us, like plants
which are not of earthly origin, to our kindred; for the head is
nearest to heaven. He who is intent upon the gratification of his
desires and cherishes the mortal soul, has all his ideas mortal,
and is himself mortal in the truest sense. But he who seeks after
knowledge and exercises the divine part of himself in godly and
immortal thoughts, attains to truth and immortality, as far as is
possible to man, and also to happiness, while he is training up
within him the divine principle and indwelling power of order.
There is only one way in which one person can benefit another;
and that is by assigning to him his proper nurture and motion. To
the motions of the soul answer the motions of the universe, and
by the study of these the individual is restored to his original
nature.
Thus we have finished the discussion of the universe, which,
according to our original intention, has now been brought down to
the creation of man. Completeness seems to require that something
should be briefly said about other animals: first of women, who
are probably degenerate and cowardly men. And when they
degenerated, the gods implanted in men the desire of union with
them, creating in man one animate substance and in woman another
in the following manner:—The outlet for liquids they connected
with the living principle of the spinal marrow, which the man has
the desire to emit into the fruitful womb of the woman; this is
like a fertile field in which the seed is quickened and matured,
and at last brought to light. When this desire is unsatisfied the
man is over-mastered by the power of the generative organs, and
the woman is subjected to disorders from the obstruction of the
passages of the breath, until the two meet and pluck the fruit of
the tree.
The race of birds was created out of innocent, light-minded men,
who thought to pursue the study of the heavens by sight; these
were transformed into birds, and grew feathers instead of hair.
The race of wild animals were men who had no philosophy, and
never looked up to heaven or used the courses of the head, but
followed only the influences of passion. Naturally they turned to
their kindred earth, and put their forelegs to the ground, and
their heads were crushed into strange oblong forms. Some of them
have four feet, and some of them more than four,—the latter, who
are the more senseless, drawing closer to their native element;
the most senseless of all have no limbs and trail their whole
body on the ground. The fourth kind are the inhabitants of the
waters; these are made out of the most senseless and ignorant and
impure of men, whom God placed in the uttermost parts of the
world in return for their utter ignorance, and caused them to
respire water instead of the pure element of air. Such are the
laws by which animals pass into one another.
And so the world received animals, mortal and immortal, and was
fulfilled with them, and became a visible God, comprehending the
visible, made in the image of the Intellectual, being the one
perfect only-begotten heaven.
Section 2.
Nature in the aspect which she presented to a Greek philosopher
of the fourth century before Christ is not easily reproduced to
modern eyes. The associations of mythology and poetry have to be
added, and the unconscious influence of science has to be
subtracted, before we can behold the heavens or the earth as they
appeared to the Greek. The philosopher himself was a child and
also a man—a child in the range of his attainments, but also a
great intelligence having an insight into nature, and often
anticipations of the truth. He was full of original thoughts, and
yet liable to be imposed upon by the most obvious fallacies. He
occasionally confused numbers with ideas, and atoms with numbers;
his a priori notions were out of all proportion to his
experience. He was ready to explain the phenomena of the heavens
by the most trivial analogies of earth. The experiments which
nature worked for him he sometimes accepted, but he never tried
experiments for himself which would either prove or disprove his
theories. His knowledge was unequal; while in some branches, such
as medicine and astronomy, he had made considerable proficiency,
there were others, such as chemistry, electricity, mechanics, of
which the very names were unknown to him. He was the natural
enemy of mythology, and yet mythological ideas still retained
their hold over him. He was endeavouring to form a conception of
principles, but these principles or ideas were regarded by him as
real powers or entities, to which the world had been subjected.
He was always tending to argue from what was near to what was
remote, from what was known to what was unknown, from man to the
universe, and back again from the universe to man. While he was
arranging the world, he was arranging the forms of thought in his
own mind; and the light from within and the light from without
often crossed and helped to confuse one another. He might be
compared to a builder engaged in some great design, who could
only dig with his hands because he was unprovided with common
tools; or to some poet or musician, like Tynnichus (Ion), obliged
to accommodate his lyric raptures to the limits of the tetrachord
or of the flute.
The Hesiodic and Orphic cosmogonies were a phase of thought
intermediate between mythology and philosophy and had a great
influence on the beginnings of knowledge. There was nothing
behind them; they were to physical science what the poems of
Homer were to early Greek history. They made men think of the
world as a whole; they carried the mind back into the infinity of
past time; they suggested the first observation of the effects of
fire and water on the earth’s surface. To the ancient physics
they stood much in the same relation which geology does to modern
science. But the Greek was not, like the enquirer of the last
generation, confined to a period of six thousand years; he was
able to speculate freely on the effects of infinite ages in the
production of physical phenomena. He could imagine cities which
had existed time out of mind (States.; Laws), laws or forms of
art and music which had lasted, ‘not in word only, but in very
truth, for ten thousand years’ (Laws); he was aware that natural
phenomena like the Delta of the Nile might have slowly
accumulated in long periods of time (Hdt.). But he seems to have
supposed that the course of events was recurring rather than
progressive. To this he was probably led by the fixedness of
Egyptian customs and the general observation that there were
other civilisations in the world more ancient than that of
Hellas.
The ancient philosophers found in mythology many ideas which, if
not originally derived from nature, were easily transferred to
her—such, for example, as love or hate, corresponding to
attraction or repulsion; or the conception of necessity allied
both to the regularity and irregularity of nature; or of chance,
the nameless or unknown cause; or of justice, symbolizing the law
of compensation; are of the Fates and Furies, typifying the fixed
order or the extraordinary convulsions of nature. Their own
interpretations of Homer and the poets were supposed by them to
be the original meaning. Musing in themselves on the phenomena of
nature, they were relieved at being able to utter the thoughts of
their hearts in figures of speech which to them were not figures,
and were already consecrated by tradition. Hesiod and the Orphic
poets moved in a region of half-personification in which the
meaning or principle appeared through the person. In their vaster
conceptions of Chaos, Erebus, Aether, Night, and the like, the
first rude attempts at generalization are dimly seen. The Gods
themselves, especially the greater Gods, such as Zeus, Poseidon,
Apollo, Athene, are universals as well as individuals. They were
gradually becoming lost in a common conception of mind or God.
They continued to exist for the purposes of ritual or of art; but
from the sixth century onwards or even earlier there arose and
gained strength in the minds of men the notion of ‘one God,
greatest among Gods and men, who was all sight, all hearing, all
knowing’ (Xenophanes).
Under the influence of such ideas, perhaps also deriving from the
traditions of their own or of other nations scraps of medicine
and astronomy, men came to the observation of nature. The Greek
philosopher looked at the blue circle of the heavens and it
flashed upon him that all things were one; the tumult of sense
abated, and the mind found repose in the thought which former
generations had been striving to realize. The first expression of
this was some element, rarefied by degrees into a pure
abstraction, and purged from any tincture of sense. Soon an inner
world of ideas began to be unfolded, more absorbing, more
overpowering, more abiding than the brightest of visible objects,
which to the eye of the philosopher looking inward, seemed to
pale before them, retaining only a faint and precarious
existence. At the same time, the minds of men parted into the two
great divisions of those who saw only a principle of motion, and
of those who saw only a principle of rest, in nature and in
themselves; there were born Heracliteans or Eleatics, as there
have been in later ages born Aristotelians or Platonists. Like
some philosophers in modern times, who are accused of making a
theory first and finding their facts afterwards, the advocates of
either opinion never thought of applying either to themselves or
to their adversaries the criterion of fact. They were mastered by
their ideas and not masters of them. Like the Heraclitean
fanatics whom Plato has ridiculed in the Theaetetus, they were
incapable of giving a reason of the faith that was in them, and
had all the animosities of a religious sect. Yet, doubtless,
there was some first impression derived from external nature,
which, as in mythology, so also in philosophy, worked upon the
minds of the first thinkers. Though incapable of induction or
generalization in the modern sense, they caught an inspiration
from the external world. The most general facts or appearances of
nature, the circle of the universe, the nutritive power of water,
the air which is the breath of life, the destructive force of
fire, the seeming regularity of the greater part of nature and
the irregularity of a remnant, the recurrence of day and night
and of the seasons, the solid earth and the impalpable aether,
were always present to them.
The great source of error and also the beginning of truth to them
was reasoning from analogy; they could see resemblances, but not
differences; and they were incapable of distinguishing
illustration from argument. Analogy in modern times only points
the way, and is immediately verified by experiment. The dreams
and visions, which pass through the philosopher’s mind, of
resemblances between different classes of substances, or between
the animal and vegetable world, are put into the refiner’s fire,
and the dross and other elements which adhere to them are purged
away. But the contemporary of Plato and Socrates was incapable of
resisting the power of any analogy which occurred to him, and was
drawn into any consequences which seemed to follow. He had no
methods of difference or of concomitant variations, by the use of
which he could distinguish the accidental from the essential. He
could not isolate phenomena, and he was helpless against the
influence of any word which had an equivocal or double sense.
Yet without this crude use of analogy the ancient physical
philosopher would have stood still; he could not have made even
‘one guess among many’ without comparison. The course of natural
phenomena would have passed unheeded before his eyes, like fair
sights or musical sounds before the eyes and ears of an animal.
Even the fetichism of the savage is the beginning of reasoning;
the assumption of the most fanciful of causes indicates a higher
mental state than the absence of all enquiry about them. The
tendency to argue from the higher to the lower, from man to the
world, has led to many errors, but has also had an elevating
influence on philosophy. The conception of the world as a whole,
a person, an animal, has been the source of hasty
generalizations; yet this general grasp of nature led also to a
spirit of comprehensiveness in early philosophy, which has not
increased, but rather diminished, as the fields of knowledge have
become more divided. The modern physicist confines himself to one
or perhaps two branches of science. But he comparatively seldom
rises above his own department, and often falls under the
narrowing influence which any single branch, when pursued to the
exclusion of every other, has over the mind. Language, two,
exercised a spell over the beginnings of physical philosophy,
leading to error and sometimes to truth; for many thoughts were
suggested by the double meanings of words (Greek), and the
accidental distinctions of words sometimes led the ancient
philosopher to make corresponding differences in things (Greek).
‘If they are the same, why have they different names; or if they
are different, why have they the same name?’—is an argument not
easily answered in the infancy of knowledge. The modern
philosopher has always been taught the lesson which he still
imperfectly learns, that he must disengage himself from the
influence of words. Nor are there wanting in Plato, who was
himself too often the victim of them, impressive admonitions that
we should regard not words but things (States.). But upon the
whole, the ancients, though not entirely dominated by them, were
much more subject to the influence of words than the moderns.
They had no clear divisions of colours or substances; even the
four elements were undefined; the fields of knowledge were not
parted off. They were bringing order out of disorder, having a
small grain of experience mingled in a confused heap of a priori
notions. And yet, probably, their first impressions, the
illusions and mirages of their fancy, created a greater
intellectual activity and made a nearer approach to the truth
than any patient investigation of isolated facts, for which the
time had not yet come, could have accomplished.
There was one more illusion to which the ancient philosophers
were subject, and against which Plato in his later dialogues
seems to be struggling—the tendency to mere abstractions; not
perceiving that pure abstraction is only negation, they thought
that the greater the abstraction the greater the truth. Behind
any pair of ideas a new idea which comprehended them—the (Greek),
as it was technically termed—began at once to appear. Two are
truer than three, one than two. The words ‘being,’ or ‘unity,’ or
essence,’ or ‘good,’ became sacred to them. They did not see that
they had a word only, and in one sense the most unmeaning of
words. They did not understand that the content of notions is in
inverse proportion to their universality—the element which is the
most widely diffused is also the thinnest; or, in the language of
the common logic, the greater the extension the less the
comprehension. But this vacant idea of a whole without parts, of
a subject without predicates, a rest without motion, has been
also the most fruitful of all ideas. It is the beginning of a
priori thought, and indeed of thinking at all. Men were led to
conceive it, not by a love of hasty generalization, but by a
divine instinct, a dialectical enthusiasm, in which the human
faculties seemed to yearn for enlargement. We know that ‘being’
is only the verb of existence, the copula, the most general
symbol of relation, the first and most meagre of abstractions;
but to some of the ancient philosophers this little word appeared
to attain divine proportions, and to comprehend all truth. Being
or essence, and similar words, represented to them a supreme or
divine being, in which they thought that they found the
containing and continuing principle of the universe. In a few
years the human mind was peopled with abstractions; a new world
was called into existence to give law and order to the old. But
between them there was still a gulf, and no one could pass from
the one to the other.
Number and figure were the greatest instruments of thought which
were possessed by the Greek philosopher; having the same power
over the mind which was exerted by abstract ideas, they were also
capable of practical application. Many curious and, to the early
thinker, mysterious properties of them came to light when they
were compared with one another. They admitted of infinite
multiplication and construction; in Pythagorean triangles or in
proportions of 1:2:4:8 and 1:3:9:27, or compounds of them, the
laws of the world seemed to be more than half revealed. They were
also capable of infinite subdivision—a wonder and also a puzzle
to the ancient thinker (Rep.). They were not, like being or
essence, mere vacant abstractions, but admitted of progress and
growth, while at the same time they confirmed a higher sentiment
of the mind, that there was order in the universe. And so there
began to be a real sympathy between the world within and the
world without. The numbers and figures which were present to the
mind’s eye became visible to the eye of sense; the truth of
nature was mathematics; the other properties of objects seemed to
reappear only in the light of number. Law and morality also found
a natural expression in number and figure. Instruments of such
power and elasticity could not fail to be ‘a most gracious
assistance’ to the first efforts of human intelligence.
There was another reason why numbers had so great an influence
over the minds of early thinkers—they were verified by
experience. Every use of them, even the most trivial, assured men
of their truth; they were everywhere to be found, in the least
things and the greatest alike. One, two, three, counted on the
fingers was a ‘trivial matter (Rep.), a little instrument out of
which to create a world; but from these and by the help of these
all our knowledge of nature has been developed. They were the
measure of all things, and seemed to give law to all things;
nature was rescued from chaos and confusion by their power; the
notes of music, the motions of the stars, the forms of atoms, the
evolution and recurrence of days, months, years, the military
divisions of an army, the civil divisions of a state, seemed to
afford a ‘present witness’ of them—what would have become of man
or of the world if deprived of number (Rep.)? The mystery of
number and the mystery of music were akin. There was a music of
rhythm and of harmonious motion everywhere; and to the real
connexion which existed between music and number, a fanciful or
imaginary relation was superadded. There was a music of the
spheres as well as of the notes of the lyre. If in all things
seen there was number and figure, why should they not also
pervade the unseen world, with which by their wonderful and
unchangeable nature they seemed to hold communion?
Two other points strike us in the use which the ancient
philosophers made of numbers. First, they applied to external
nature the relations of them which they found in their own minds;
and where nature seemed to be at variance with number, as for
example in the case of fractions, they protested against her
(Rep.; Arist. Metaph.). Having long meditated on the properties
of 1:2:4:8, or 1:3:9:27, or of 3, 4, 5, they discovered in them
many curious correspondences and were disposed to find in them
the secret of the universe. Secondly, they applied number and
figure equally to those parts of physics, such as astronomy or
mechanics, in which the modern philosopher expects to find them,
and to those in which he would never think of looking for them,
such as physiology and psychology. For the sciences were not yet
divided, and there was nothing really irrational in arguing that
the same laws which regulated the heavenly bodies were partially
applied to the erring limbs or brain of man. Astrology was the
form which the lively fancy of ancient thinkers almost
necessarily gave to astronomy. The observation that the lower
principle, e.g. mechanics, is always seen in the higher, e.g. in
the phenomena of life, further tended to perplex them. Plato’s
doctrine of the same and the other ruling the courses of the
heavens and of the human body is not a mere vagary, but is a
natural result of the state of knowledge and thought at which he
had arrived.
When in modern times we contemplate the heavens, a certain amount
of scientific truth imperceptibly blends, even with the cursory
glance of an unscientific person. He knows that the earth is
revolving round the sun, and not the sun around the earth. He
does not imagine the earth to be the centre of the universe, and
he has some conception of chemistry and the cognate sciences. A
very different aspect of nature would have been present to the
mind of the early Greek philosopher. He would have beheld the
earth a surface only, not mirrored, however faintly, in the glass
of science, but indissolubly connected with some theory of one,
two, or more elements. He would have seen the world pervaded by
number and figure, animated by a principle of motion, immanent in
a principle of rest. He would have tried to construct the
universe on a quantitative principle, seeming to find in endless
combinations of geometrical figures or in the infinite variety of
their sizes a sufficient account of the multiplicity of
phenomena. To these a priori speculations he would add a rude
conception of matter and his own immediate experience of health
and disease. His cosmos would necessarily be imperfect and
unequal, being the first attempt to impress form and order on the
primaeval chaos of human knowledge. He would see all things as in
a dream.
The ancient physical philosophers have been charged by Dr.
Whewell and others with wasting their fine intelligences in wrong
methods of enquiry; and their progress in moral and political
philosophy has been sometimes contrasted with their supposed
failure in physical investigations. ‘They had plenty of ideas,’
says Dr. Whewell, ‘and plenty of facts; but their ideas did not
accurately represent the facts with which they were acquainted.’
This is a very crude and misleading way of describing ancient
science. It is the mistake of an uneducated person—uneducated,
that is, in the higher sense of the word—who imagines every one
else to be like himself and explains every other age by his own.
No doubt the ancients often fell into strange and fanciful
errors: the time had not yet arrived for the slower and surer
path of the modern inductive philosophy. But it remains to be
shown that they could have done more in their age and country; or
that the contributions which they made to the sciences with which
they were acquainted are not as great upon the whole as those
made by their successors. There is no single step in astronomy as
great as that of the nameless Pythagorean who first conceived the
world to be a body moving round the sun in space: there is no
truer or more comprehensive principle than the application of
mathematics alike to the heavenly bodies, and to the particles of
matter. The ancients had not the instruments which would have
enabled them to correct or verify their anticipations, and their
opportunities of observation were limited. Plato probably did
more for physical science by asserting the supremacy of
mathematics than Aristotle or his disciples by their collections
of facts. When the thinkers of modern times, following Bacon,
undervalue or disparage the speculations of ancient philosophers,
they seem wholly to forget the conditions of the world and of the
human mind, under which they carried on their investigations.
When we accuse them of being under the influence of words, do we
suppose that we are altogether free from this illusion? When we
remark that Greek physics soon became stationary or extinct, may
we not observe also that there have been and may be again periods
in the history of modern philosophy which have been barren and
unproductive? We might as well maintain that Greek art was not
real or great, because it had nihil simile aut secundum, as say
that Greek physics were a failure because they admire no
subsequent progress.
The charge of premature generalization which is often urged
against ancient philosophers is really an anachronism. For they
can hardly be said to have generalized at all. They may be said
more truly to have cleared up and defined by the help of
experience ideas which they already possessed. The beginnings of
thought about nature must always have this character. A true
method is the result of many ages of experiment and observation,
and is ever going on and enlarging with the progress of science
and knowledge. At first men personify nature, then they form
impressions of nature, at last they conceive ‘measure’ or laws of
nature. They pass out of mythology into philosophy. Early science
is not a process of discovery in the modern sense; but rather a
process of correcting by observation, and to a certain extent
only, the first impressions of nature, which mankind, when they
began to think, had received from poetry or language or
unintelligent sense. Of all scientific truths the greatest and
simplest is the uniformity of nature; this was expressed by the
ancients in many ways, as fate, or necessity, or measure, or
limit. Unexpected events, of which the cause was unknown to them,
they attributed to chance (Thucyd.). But their conception of
nature was never that of law interrupted by exceptions,—a
somewhat unfortunate metaphysical invention of modern times,
which is at variance with facts and has failed to satisfy the
requirements of thought.
Section 3.
Plato’s account of the soul is partly mythical or figurative, and
partly literal. Not that either he or we can draw a line between
them, or say, ‘This is poetry, this is philosophy’; for the
transition from the one to the other is imperceptible. Neither
must we expect to find in him absolute consistency. He is apt to
pass from one level or stage of thought to another without always
making it apparent that he is changing his ground. In such
passages we have to interpret his meaning by the general spirit
of his writings. To reconcile his inconsistencies would be
contrary to the first principles of criticism and fatal to any
true understanding of him.
There is a further difficulty in explaining this part of the
Timaeus—the natural order of thought is inverted. We begin with
the most abstract, and proceed from the abstract to the concrete.
We are searching into things which are upon the utmost limit of
human intelligence, and then of a sudden we fall rather heavily
to the earth. There are no intermediate steps which lead from one
to the other. But the abstract is a vacant form to us until
brought into relation with man and nature. God and the world are
mere names, like the Being of the Eleatics, unless some human
qualities are added on to them. Yet the negation has a kind of
unknown meaning to us. The priority of God and of the world,
which he is imagined to have created, to all other existences,
gives a solemn awe to them. And as in other systems of theology
and philosophy, that of which we know least has the greatest
interest to us.
There is no use in attempting to define or explain the first God
in the Platonic system, who has sometimes been thought to answer
to God the Father; or the world, in whom the Fathers of the
Church seemed to recognize ‘the firstborn of every creature.’ Nor
need we discuss at length how far Plato agrees in the later
Jewish idea of creation, according to which God made the world
out of nothing. For his original conception of matter as
something which has no qualities is really a negation. Moreover
in the Hebrew Scriptures the creation of the world is described,
even more explicitly than in the Timaeus, not as a single act,
but as a work or process which occupied six days. There is a
chaos in both, and it would be untrue to say that the Greek, any
more than the Hebrew, had any definite belief in the eternal
existence of matter. The beginning of things vanished into the
distance. The real creation began, not with matter, but with
ideas. According to Plato in the Timaeus, God took of the same
and the other, of the divided and undivided, of the finite and
infinite, and made essence, and out of the three combined created
the soul of the world. To the soul he added a body formed out of
the four elements. The general meaning of these words is that God
imparted determinations of thought, or, as we might say, gave law
and variety to the material universe. The elements are moving in
a disorderly manner before the work of creation begins; and there
is an eternal pattern of the world, which, like the ‘idea of
good,’ is not the Creator himself, but not separable from him.
The pattern too, though eternal, is a creation, a world of
thought prior to the world of sense, which may be compared to the
wisdom of God in the book of Ecclesiasticus, or to the ‘God in
the form of a globe’ of the old Eleatic philosophers. The
visible, which already exists, is fashioned in the likeness of
this eternal pattern. On the other hand, there is no truth of
which Plato is more firmly convinced than of the priority of the
soul to the body, both in the universe and in man. So
inconsistent are the forms in which he describes the works which
no tongue can utter—his language, as he himself says, partaking
of his own uncertainty about the things of which he is speaking.
We may remark in passing, that the Platonic compared with the
Jewish description of the process of creation has less of freedom
or spontaneity. The Creator in Plato is still subject to a
remnant of necessity which he cannot wholly overcome. When his
work is accomplished he remains in his own nature. Plato is more
sensible than the Hebrew prophet of the existence of evil, which
he seeks to put as far as possible out of the way of God. And he
can only suppose this to be accomplished by God retiring into
himself and committing the lesser works of creation to inferior
powers. (Compare, however, Laws for another solution of the
difficulty.)
Nor can we attach any intelligible meaning to his words when he
speaks of the visible being in the image of the invisible. For
how can that which is divided be like that which is undivided? Or
that which is changing be the copy of that which is unchanging?
All the old difficulties about the ideas come back upon us in an
altered form. We can imagine two worlds, one of which is the mere
double of the other, or one of which is an imperfect copy of the
other, or one of which is the vanishing ideal of the other; but
we cannot imagine an intellectual world which has no qualities—‘a
thing in itself’—a point which has no parts or magnitude, which
is nowhere, and nothing. This cannot be the archetype according
to which God made the world, and is in reality, whether in Plato
or in Kant, a mere negative residuum of human thought.
There is another aspect of the same difficulty which appears to
have no satisfactory solution. In what relation does the
archetype stand to the Creator himself? For the idea or pattern
of the world is not the thought of God, but a separate,
self-existent nature, of which creation is the copy. We can only
reply, (1) that to the mind of Plato subject and object were not
yet distinguished; (2) that he supposes the process of creation
to take place in accordance with his own theory of ideas; and as
we cannot give a consistent account of the one, neither can we of
the other. He means (3) to say that the creation of the world is
not a material process of working with legs and arms, but ideal
and intellectual; according to his own fine expression, ‘the
thought of God made the God that was to be.’ He means (4) to draw
an absolute distinction between the invisible or unchangeable
which is or is the place of mind or being, and the world of sense
or becoming which is visible and changing. He means (5) that the
idea of the world is prior to the world, just as the other ideas
are prior to sensible objects; and like them may be regarded as
eternal and self-existent, and also, like the IDEA of good, may
be viewed apart from the divine mind.
There are several other questions which we might ask and which
can receive no answer, or at least only an answer of the same
kind as the preceding. How can matter be conceived to exist
without form? Or, how can the essences or forms of things be
distinguished from the eternal ideas, or essence itself from the
soul? Or, how could there have been motion in the chaos when as
yet time was not? Or, how did chaos come into existence, if not
by the will of the Creator? Or, how could there have been a time
when the world was not, if time was not? Or, how could the
Creator have taken portions of an indivisible same? Or, how could
space or anything else have been eternal when time is only
created? Or, how could the surfaces of geometrical figures have
formed solids? We must reply again that we cannot follow Plato in
all his inconsistencies, but that the gaps of thought are
probably more apparent to us than to him. He would, perhaps, have
said that ‘the first things are known only to God and to him of
men whom God loves.’ How often have the gaps in Theology been
concealed from the eye of faith! And we may say that only by an
effort of metaphysical imagination can we hope to understand
Plato from his own point of view; we must not ask for
consistency. Everywhere we find traces of the Platonic theory of
knowledge expressed in an objective form, which by us has to be
translated into the subjective, before we can attach any meaning
to it. And this theory is exhibited in so many different points
of view, that we cannot with any certainty interpret one dialogue
by another; e.g. the Timaeus by the Parmenides or Phaedrus or
Philebus.
The soul of the world may also be conceived as the
personification of the numbers and figures in which the heavenly
bodies move. Imagine these as in a Pythagorean dream, stripped of
qualitative difference and reduced to mathematical abstractions.
They too conform to the principle of the same, and may be
compared with the modern conception of laws of nature. They are
in space, but not in time, and they are the makers of time. They
are represented as constantly thinking of the same; for thought
in the view of Plato is equivalent to truth or law, and need not
imply a human consciousness, a conception which is familiar
enough to us, but has no place, hardly even a name, in ancient
Greek philosophy. To this principle of the same is opposed the
principle of the other—the principle of irregularity and
disorder, of necessity and chance, which is only partially
impressed by mathematical laws and figures. (We may observe by
the way, that the principle of the other, which is the principle
of plurality and variation in the Timaeus, has nothing in common
with the ‘other’ of the Sophist, which is the principle of
determination.) The element of the same dominates to a certain
extent over the other—the fixed stars keep the ‘wanderers’ of the
inner circle in their courses, and a similar principle of
fixedness or order appears to regulate the bodily constitution of
man. But there still remains a rebellious seed of evil derived
from the original chaos, which is the source of disorder in the
world, and of vice and disease in man.
But what did Plato mean by essence, (Greek), which is the
intermediate nature compounded of the Same and the Other, and out
of which, together with these two, the soul of the world is
created? It is difficult to explain a process of thought so
strange and unaccustomed to us, in which modern distinctions run
into one another and are lost sight of. First, let us consider
once more the meaning of the Same and the Other. The Same is the
unchanging and indivisible, the heaven of the fixed stars,
partaking of the divine nature, which, having law in itself,
gives law to all besides and is the element of order and
permanence in man and on the earth. It is the rational principle,
mind regarded as a work, as creation—not as the creator. The old
tradition of Parmenides and of the Eleatic Being, the foundation
of so much in the philosophy of Greece and of the world, was
lingering in Plato’s mind. The Other is the variable or changing
element, the residuum of disorder or chaos, which cannot be
reduced to order, nor altogether banished, the source of evil,
seen in the errors of man and also in the wanderings of the
planets, a necessity which protrudes through nature. Of this too
there was a shadow in the Eleatic philosophy in the realm of
opinion, which, like a mist, seemed to darken the purity of truth
in itself.—So far the words of Plato may perhaps find an
intelligible meaning. But when he goes on to speak of the Essence
which is compounded out of both, the track becomes fainter and we
can only follow him with hesitating steps. But still we find a
trace reappearing of the teaching of Anaxagoras: ‘All was
confusion, and then mind came and arranged things.’ We have
already remarked that Plato was not acquainted with the modern
distinction of subject and object, and therefore he sometimes
confuses mind and the things of mind—(Greek) and (Greek). By
(Greek) he clearly means some conception of the intelligible and
the intelligent; it belongs to the class of (Greek). Matter,
being, the Same, the eternal,—for any of these terms, being
almost vacant of meaning, is equally suitable to express
indefinite existence,—are compared or united with the Other or
Diverse, and out of the union or comparison is elicited the idea
of intelligence, the ‘One in many,’ brighter than any Promethean
fire (Phil.), which co-existing with them and so forming a new
existence, is or becomes the intelligible world...So we may
perhaps venture to paraphrase or interpret or put into other
words the parable in which Plato has wrapped up his conception of
the creation of the world. The explanation may help to fill up
with figures of speech the void of knowledge.
The entire compound was divided by the Creator in certain
proportions and reunited; it was then cut into two strips, which
were bent into an inner circle and an outer, both moving with an
uniform motion around a centre, the outer circle containing the
fixed, the inner the wandering stars. The soul of the world was
diffused everywhere from the centre to the circumference. To this
God gave a body, consisting at first of fire and earth, and
afterwards receiving an addition of air and water; because solid
bodies, like the world, are always connected by two middle terms
and not by one. The world was made in the form of a globe, and
all the material elements were exhausted in the work of creation.
The proportions in which the soul of the world as well as the
human soul is divided answer to a series of numbers 1, 2, 3, 4,
9, 8, 27, composed of the two Pythagorean progressions 1, 2, 4, 8
and 1, 3, 9, 27, of which the number 1 represents a point, 2 and
3 lines, 4 and 8, 9 and 27 the squares and cubes respectively of
2 and 3. This series, of which the intervals are afterwards
filled up, probably represents (1) the diatonic scale according
to the Pythagoreans and Plato; (2) the order and distances of the
heavenly bodies; and (3) may possibly contain an allusion to the
music of the spheres, which is referred to in the myth at the end
of the Republic. The meaning of the words that ‘solid bodies are
always connected by two middle terms’ or mean proportionals has
been much disputed. The most received explanation is that of
Martin, who supposes that Plato is only speaking of surfaces and
solids compounded of prime numbers (i.e. of numbers not made up
of two factors, or, in other words, only measurable by unity).
The square of any such number represents a surface, the cube a
solid. The squares of any two such numbers (e.g. 2 squared, 3
squared = 4, 9), have always a single mean proportional (e.g. 4
and 9 have the single mean 6), whereas the cubes of primes (e.g.
3 cubed and 5 cubed) have always two mean proportionals (e.g.
27:45:75:125). But to this explanation of Martin’s it may be
objected, (1) that Plato nowhere says that his proportion is to
be limited to prime numbers; (2) that the limitation of surfaces
to squares is also not to be found in his words; nor (3) is there
any evidence to show that the distinction of prime from other
numbers was known to him. What Plato chiefly intends to express
is that a solid requires a stronger bond than a surface; and that
the double bond which is given by two means is stronger than the
single bond given by one. Having reflected on the singular
numerical phenomena of the existence of one mean proportional
between two square numbers are rather perhaps only between the
two lowest squares; and of two mean proportionals between two
cubes, perhaps again confining his attention to the two lowest
cubes, he finds in the latter symbol an expression of the
relation of the elements, as in the former an image of the
combination of two surfaces. Between fire and earth, the two
extremes, he remarks that there are introduced, not one, but two
elements, air and water, which are compared to the two mean
proportionals between two cube numbers. The vagueness of his
language does not allow us to determine whether anything more
than this was intended by him.
Leaving the further explanation of details, which the reader will
find discussed at length in Boeckh and Martin, we may now return
to the main argument: Why did God make the world? Like man, he
must have a purpose; and his purpose is the diffusion of that
goodness or good which he himself is. The term ‘goodness’ is not
to be understood in this passage as meaning benevolence or love,
in the Christian sense of the term, but rather law, order,
harmony, like the idea of good in the Republic. The ancient
mythologers, and even the Hebrew prophets, had spoken of the
jealousy of God; and the Greek had imagined that there was a
Nemesis always attending the prosperity of mortals. But Plato
delights to think of God as the author of order in his works,
who, like a father, lives over again in his children, and can
never have too much of good or friendship among his creatures.
Only, as there is a certain remnant of evil inherent in matter
which he cannot get rid of, he detaches himself from them and
leaves them to themselves, that he may be guiltless of their
faults and sufferings.
Between the ideal and the sensible Plato interposes the two
natures of time and space. Time is conceived by him to be only
the shadow or image of eternity which ever is and never has been
or will be, but is described in a figure only as past or future.
This is one of the great thoughts of early philosophy, which are
still as difficult to our minds as they were to the early
thinkers; or perhaps more difficult, because we more distinctly
see the consequences which are involved in such an hypothesis.
All the objections which may be urged against Kant’s doctrine of
the ideality of space and time at once press upon us. If time is
unreal, then all which is contained in time is unreal—the
succession of human thoughts as well as the flux of sensations;
there is no connecting link between (Greek) and (Greek). Yet, on
the other hand, we are conscious that knowledge is independent of
time, that truth is not a thing of yesterday or tomorrow, but an
‘eternal now.’ To the ‘spectator of all time and all existence’
the universe remains at rest. The truths of geometry and
arithmetic in all their combinations are always the same. The
generations of men, like the leaves of the forest, come and go,
but the mathematical laws by which the world is governed remain,
and seem as if they could never change. The ever-present image of
space is transferred to time—succession is conceived as
extension. (We remark that Plato does away with the above and
below in space, as he has done away with the absolute existence
of past and future.) The course of time, unless regularly marked
by divisions of number, partakes of the indefiniteness of the
Heraclitean flux. By such reflections we may conceive the Greek
to have attained the metaphysical conception of eternity, which
to the Hebrew was gained by meditation on the Divine Being. No
one saw that this objective was really a subjective, and involved
the subjectivity of all knowledge. ‘Non in tempore sed cum
tempore finxit Deus mundum,’ says St. Augustine, repeating a
thought derived from the Timaeus, but apparently unconscious of
the results to which his doctrine would have led.
The contradictions involved in the conception of time or motion,
like the infinitesimal in space, were a source of perplexity to
the mind of the Greek, who was driven to find a point of view
above or beyond them. They had sprung up in the decline of the
Eleatic philosophy and were very familiar to Plato, as we gather
from the Parmenides. The consciousness of them had led the great
Eleatic philosopher to describe the nature of God or Being under
negatives. He sings of ‘Being unbegotten and imperishable,
unmoved and never-ending, which never was nor will be, but always
is, one and continuous, which cannot spring from any other; for
it cannot be said or imagined not to be.’ The idea of eternity
was for a great part a negation. There are regions of speculation
in which the negative is hardly separable from the positive, and
even seems to pass into it. Not only Buddhism, but Greek as well
as Christian philosophy, show that it is quite possible that the
human mind should retain an enthusiasm for mere negations. In
different ages and countries there have been forms of light in
which nothing could be discerned and which have nevertheless
exercised a life-giving and illumining power. For the higher
intelligence of man seems to require, not only something above
sense, but above knowledge, which can only be described as Mind
or Being or Truth or God or the unchangeable and eternal element,
in the expression of which all predicates fail and fall short.
Eternity or the eternal is not merely the unlimited in time but
the truest of all Being, the most real of all realities, the most
certain of all knowledge, which we nevertheless only see through
a glass darkly. The passionate earnestness of Parmenides
contrasts with the vacuity of the thought which he is revolving
in his mind.
Space is said by Plato to be the ‘containing vessel or nurse of
generation.’ Reflecting on the simplest kinds of external
objects, which to the ancients were the four elements, he was led
to a more general notion of a substance, more or less like
themselves, out of which they were fashioned. He would not have
them too precisely distinguished. Thus seems to have arisen the
first dim perception of (Greek) or matter, which has played so
great a part in the metaphysical philosophy of Aristotle and his
followers. But besides the material out of which the elements are
made, there is also a space in which they are contained. There
arises thus a second nature which the senses are incapable of
discerning and which can hardly be referred to the intelligible
class. For it is and it is not, it is nowhere when filled, it is
nothing when empty. Hence it is said to be discerned by a kind of
spurious or analogous reason, partaking so feebly of existence as
to be hardly perceivable, yet always reappearing as the
containing mother or nurse of all things. It had not that sort of
consistency to Plato which has been given to it in modern times
by geometry and metaphysics. Neither of the Greek words by which
it is described are so purely abstract as the English word
‘space’ or the Latin ‘spatium.’ Neither Plato nor any other Greek
would have spoken of (Greek) or (Greek) in the same manner as we
speak of ‘time’ and ‘space.’
Yet space is also of a very permanent or even eternal nature; and
Plato seems more willing to admit of the unreality of time than
of the unreality of space; because, as he says, all things must
necessarily exist in space. We, on the other hand, are disposed
to fancy that even if space were annihilated time might still
survive. He admits indeed that our knowledge of space is of a
dreamy kind, and is given by a spurious reason without the help
of sense. (Compare the hypotheses and images of Rep.) It is true
that it does not attain to the clearness of ideas. But like them
it seems to remain, even if all the objects contained in it are
supposed to have vanished away. Hence it was natural for Plato to
conceive of it as eternal. We must remember further that in his
attempt to realize either space or matter the two abstract ideas
of weight and extension, which are familiar to us, had never
passed before his mind.
Thus far God, working according to an eternal pattern, out of his
goodness has created the same, the other, and the essence
(compare the three principles of the Philebus—the finite, the
infinite, and the union of the two), and out of them has formed
the outer circle of the fixed stars and the inner circle of the
planets, divided according to certain musical intervals; he has
also created time, the moving image of eternity, and space,
existing by a sort of necessity and hardly distinguishable from
matter. The matter out of which the world is formed is not
absolutely void, but retains in the chaos certain germs or traces
of the elements. These Plato, like Empedocles, supposed to be
four in number—fire, air, earth, and water. They were at first
mixed together; but already in the chaos, before God fashioned
them by form and number, the greater masses of the elements had
an appointed place. Into the confusion (Greek) which preceded
Plato does not attempt further to penetrate. They are called
elements, but they are so far from being elements (Greek) or
letters in the higher sense that they are not even syllables or
first compounds. The real elements are two triangles, the
rectangular isosceles which has but one form, and the most
beautiful of the many forms of scalene, which is half of an
equilateral triangle. By the combination of these triangles which
exist in an infinite variety of sizes, the surfaces of the four
elements are constructed.
That there were only five regular solids was already known to the
ancients, and out of the surfaces which he has formed Plato
proceeds to generate the four first of the five. He perhaps
forgets that he is only putting together surfaces and has not
provided for their transformation into solids. The first solid is
a regular pyramid, of which the base and sides are formed by four
equilateral or twenty-four scalene triangles. Each of the four
solid angles in this figure is a little larger than the largest
of obtuse angles. The second solid is composed of the same
triangles, which unite as eight equilateral triangles, and make
one solid angle out of four plane angles—six of these angles form
a regular octahedron. The third solid is a regular icosahedron,
having twenty triangular equilateral bases, and therefore 120
rectangular scalene triangles. The fourth regular solid, or cube,
is formed by the combination of four isosceles triangles into one
square and of six squares into a cube. The fifth regular solid,
or dodecahedron, cannot be formed by a combination of either of
these triangles, but each of its faces may be regarded as
composed of thirty triangles of another kind. Probably Plato
notices this as the only remaining regular polyhedron, which from
its approximation to a globe, and possibly because, as Plutarch
remarks, it is composed of 12 x 30 = 360 scalene triangles
(Platon. Quaest.), representing thus the signs and degrees of the
Zodiac, as well as the months and days of the year, God may be
said to have ‘used in the delineation of the universe.’ According
to Plato earth was composed of cubes, fire of regular pyramids,
air of regular octahedrons, water of regular icosahedrons. The
stability of the last three increases with the number of their
sides.
The elements are supposed to pass into one another, but we must
remember that these transformations are not the transformations
of real solids, but of imaginary geometrical figures; in other
words, we are composing and decomposing the faces of substances
and not the substances themselves—it is a house of cards which we
are pulling to pieces and putting together again (compare however
Laws). Yet perhaps Plato may regard these sides or faces as only
the forms which are impressed on pre-existent matter. It is
remarkable that he should speak of each of these solids as a
possible world in itself, though upon the whole he inclines to
the opinion that they form one world and not five. To suppose
that there is an infinite number of worlds, as Democritus
(Hippolyt. Ref. Haer. I.) had said, would be, as he satirically
observes, ‘the characteristic of a very indefinite and ignorant
mind.’
The twenty triangular faces of an icosahedron form the faces or
sides of two regular octahedrons and of a regular pyramid (20 = 8
x 2 + 4); and therefore, according to Plato, a particle of water
when decomposed is supposed to give two particles of air and one
of fire. So because an octahedron gives the sides of two pyramids
(8 = 4 x 2), a particle of air is resolved into two particles of
fire.
The transformation is effected by the superior power or number of
the conquering elements. The manner of the change is (1) a
separation of portions of the elements from the masses in which
they are collected; (2) a resolution of them into their original
triangles; and (3) a reunion of them in new forms. Plato himself
proposes the question, Why does motion continue at all when the
elements are settled in their places? He answers that although
the force of attraction is continually drawing similar elements
to the same spot, still the revolution of the universe exercises
a condensing power, and thrusts them again out of their natural
places. Thus want of uniformity, the condition of motion, is
produced. In all such disturbances of matter there is an
alternative for the weaker element: it may escape to its kindred,
or take the form of the stronger—becoming denser, if it be
denser, or rarer if rarer. This is true of fire, air, and water,
which, being composed of similar triangles, are interchangeable;
earth, however, which has triangles peculiar to itself, is
capable of dissolution, but not of change. Of the interchangeable
elements, fire, the rarest, can only become a denser, and water,
the densest, only a rarer: but air may become a denser or a
rarer. No single particle of the elements is visible, but only
the aggregates of them are seen. The subordinate species depend,
not upon differences of form in the original triangles, but upon
differences of size. The obvious physical phenomena from which
Plato has gathered his views of the relations of the elements
seem to be the effect of fire upon air, water, and earth, and the
effect of water upon earth. The particles are supposed by him to
be in a perpetual process of circulation caused by inequality.
This process of circulation does not admit of a vacuum, as he
tells us in his strange account of respiration.
Of the phenomena of light and heavy he speaks afterwards, when
treating of sensation, but they may be more conveniently
considered by us in this place. They are not, he says, to be
explained by ‘above’ and ‘below,’ which in the universal globe
have no existence, but by the attraction of similars towards the
great masses of similar substances; fire to fire, air to air,
water to water, earth to earth. Plato’s doctrine of attraction
implies not only (1) the attraction of similar elements to one
another, but also (2) of smaller bodies to larger ones. Had he
confined himself to the latter he would have arrived, though,
perhaps, without any further result or any sense of the greatness
of the discovery, at the modern doctrine of gravitation. He does
not observe that water has an equal tendency towards both water
and earth. So easily did the most obvious facts which were
inconsistent with his theories escape him.
The general physical doctrines of the Timaeus may be summed up as
follows: (1) Plato supposes the greater masses of the elements to
have been already settled in their places at the creation: (2)
they are four in number, and are formed of rectangular triangles
variously combined into regular solid figures: (3) three of them,
fire, air, and water, admit of transformation into one another;
the fourth, earth, cannot be similarly transformed: (4) different
sizes of the same triangles form the lesser species of each
element: (5) there is an attraction of like to like—smaller
masses of the same kind being drawn towards greater: (6) there is
no void, but the particles of matter are ever pushing one another
round and round (Greek). Like the atomists, Plato attributes the
differences between the elements to differences in geometrical
figures. But he does not explain the process by which surfaces
become solids; and he characteristically ridicules Democritus for
not seeing that the worlds are finite and not infinite.
Section 4.
The astronomy of Plato is based on the two principles of the same
and the other, which God combined in the creation of the world.
The soul, which is compounded of the same, the other, and the
essence, is diffused from the centre to the circumference of the
heavens. We speak of a soul of the universe; but more truly
regarded, the universe of the Timaeus is a soul, governed by
mind, and holding in solution a residuum of matter or evil, which
the author of the world is unable to expel, and of which Plato
cannot tell us the origin. The creation, in Plato’s sense, is
really the creation of order; and the first step in giving order
is the division of the heavens into an inner and outer circle of
the other and the same, of the divisible and the indivisible,
answering to the two spheres, of the planets and of the world
beyond them, all together moving around the earth, which is their
centre. To us there is a difficulty in apprehending how that
which is at rest can also be in motion, or that which is
indivisible exist in space. But the whole description is so ideal
and imaginative, that we can hardly venture to attribute to many
of Plato’s words in the Timaeus any more meaning than to his
mythical account of the heavens in the Republic and in the
Phaedrus. (Compare his denial of the ‘blasphemous opinion’ that
there are planets or wandering stars; all alike move in
circles—Laws.) The stars are the habitations of the souls of men,
from which they come and to which they return. In attributing to
the fixed stars only the most perfect motion—that which is on the
same spot or circulating around the same—he might perhaps have
said that to ‘the spectator of all time and all existence,’ to
borrow once more his own grand expression, or viewed, in the
language of Spinoza, ‘sub specie aeternitatis,’ they were still
at rest, but appeared to move in order to teach men the periods
of time. Although absolutely in motion, they are relatively at
rest; or we may conceive of them as resting, while the space in
which they are contained, or the whole anima mundi, revolves.
The universe revolves around a centre once in twenty-four hours,
but the orbits of the fixed stars take a different direction from
those of the planets. The outer and the inner sphere cross one
another and meet again at a point opposite to that of their first
contact; the first moving in a circle from left to right along
the side of a parallelogram which is supposed to be inscribed in
it, the second also moving in a circle along the diagonal of the
same parallelogram from right to left; or, in other words, the
first describing the path of the equator, the second, the path of
the ecliptic. The motion of the second is controlled by the
first, and hence the oblique line in which the planets are
supposed to move becomes a spiral. The motion of the same is said
to be undivided, whereas the inner motion is split into seven
unequal orbits—the intervals between them being in the ratio of
two and three, three of either:—the Sun, moving in the opposite
direction to Mercury and Venus, but with equal swiftness; the
remaining four, Moon, Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, with unequal
swiftness to the former three and to one another. Thus arises the
following progression:—Moon 1, Sun 2, Venus 3, Mercury 4, Mars 8,
Jupiter 9, Saturn 27. This series of numbers is the compound of
the two Pythagorean ratios, having the same intervals, though not
in the same order, as the mixture which was originally divided in
forming the soul of the world.
Plato was struck by the phenomenon of Mercury, Venus, and the Sun
appearing to overtake and be overtaken by one another. The true
reason of this, namely, that they lie within the circle of the
earth’s orbit, was unknown to him, and the reason which he
gives—that the two former move in an opposite direction to the
latter—is far from explaining the appearance of them in the
heavens. All the planets, including the sun, are carried round in
the daily motion of the circle of the fixed stars, and they have
a second or oblique motion which gives the explanation of the
different lengths of the sun’s course in different parts of the
earth. The fixed stars have also two movements—a forward movement
in their orbit which is common to the whole circle; and a
movement on the same spot around an axis, which Plato calls the
movement of thought about the same. In this latter respect they
are more perfect than the wandering stars, as Plato himself terms
them in the Timaeus, although in the Laws he condemns the
appellation as blasphemous.
The revolution of the world around earth, which is accomplished
in a single day and night, is described as being the most perfect
or intelligent. Yet Plato also speaks of an ‘annus magnus’ or
cyclical year, in which periods wonderful for their complexity
are found to coincide in a perfect number, i.e. a number which
equals the sum of its factors, as 6 = 1 + 2 + 3. This, although
not literally contradictory, is in spirit irreconcilable with the
perfect revolution of twenty-four hours. The same remark may be
applied to the complexity of the appearances and occultations of
the stars, which, if the outer heaven is supposed to be moving
around the centre once in twenty-four hours, must be confined to
the effects produced by the seven planets. Plato seems to confuse
the actual observation of the heavens with his desire to find in
them mathematical perfection. The same spirit is carried yet
further by him in the passage already quoted from the Laws, in
which he affirms their wanderings to be an appearance only, which
a little knowledge of mathematics would enable men to correct.
We have now to consider the much discussed question of the
rotation or immobility of the earth. Plato’s doctrine on this
subject is contained in the following words:—‘The earth, which is
our nurse, compacted (OR revolving) around the pole which is
extended through the universe, he made to be the guardian and
artificer of night and day, first and eldest of gods that are in
the interior of heaven’. There is an unfortunate doubt in this
passage (1) about the meaning of the word (Greek), which is
translated either ‘compacted’ or ‘revolving,’ and is equally
capable of both explanations. A doubt (2) may also be raised as
to whether the words ‘artificer of day and night’ are consistent
with the mere passive causation of them, produced by the
immobility of the earth in the midst of the circling universe. We
must admit, further, (3) that Aristotle attributed to Plato the
doctrine of the rotation of the earth on its axis. On the other
hand it has been urged that if the earth goes round with the
outer heaven and sun in twenty-four hours, there is no way of
accounting for the alternation of day and night; since the equal
motion of the earth and sun would have the effect of absolute
immobility. To which it may be replied that Plato never says that
the earth goes round with the outer heaven and sun; although the
whole question depends on the relation of earth and sun, their
movements are nowhere precisely described. But if we suppose,
with Mr. Grote, that the diurnal rotation of the earth on its
axis and the revolution of the sun and outer heaven precisely
coincide, it would be difficult to imagine that Plato was unaware
of the consequence. For though he was ignorant of many things
which are familiar to us, and often confused in his ideas where
we have become clear, we have no right to attribute to him a
childish want of reasoning about very simple facts, or an
inability to understand the necessary and obvious deductions from
geometrical figures or movements. Of the causes of day and night
the pre-Socratic philosophers, and especially the Pythagoreans,
gave various accounts, and therefore the question can hardly be
imagined to have escaped him. On the other hand it may be urged
that the further step, however simple and obvious, is just what
Plato often seems to be ignorant of, and that as there is no
limit to his insight, there is also no limit to the blindness
which sometimes obscures his intelligence (compare the
construction of solids out of surfaces in his account of the
creation of the world, or the attraction of similars to
similars). Further, Mr. Grote supposes, not that (Greek) means
‘revolving,’ or that this is the sense in which Aristotle
understood the word, but that the rotation of the earth is
necessarily implied in its adherence to the cosmical axis. But
(a) if, as Mr Grote assumes, Plato did not see that the rotation
of the earth on its axis and of the sun and outer heavens around
the earth in equal times was inconsistent with the alternation of
day and night, neither need we suppose that he would have seen
the immobility of the earth to be inconsistent with the rotation
of the axis. And (b) what proof is there that the axis of the
world revolves at all? (c) The comparison of the two passages
quoted by Mr Grote (see his pamphlet on ‘The Rotation of the
Earth’) from Aristotle De Coelo, Book II (Greek) clearly shows,
although this is a matter of minor importance, that Aristotle, as
Proclus and Simplicius supposed, understood (Greek) in the
Timaeus to mean ‘revolving.’ For the second passage, in which
motion on an axis is expressly mentioned, refers to the first,
but this would be unmeaning unless (Greek) in the first passage
meant rotation on an axis. (4) The immobility of the earth is
more in accordance with Plato’s other writings than the opposite
hypothesis. For in the Phaedo the earth is described as the
centre of the world, and is not said to be in motion. In the
Republic the pilgrims appear to be looking out from the earth
upon the motions of the heavenly bodies; in the Phaedrus, Hestia,
who remains immovable in the house of Zeus while the other gods
go in procession, is called the first and eldest of the gods, and
is probably the symbol of the earth. The silence of Plato in
these and in some other passages (Laws) in which he might be
expected to speak of the rotation of the earth, is more
favourable to the doctrine of its immobility than to the
opposite. If he had meant to say that the earth revolves on its
axis, he would have said so in distinct words, and have explained
the relation of its movements to those of the other heavenly
bodies. (5) The meaning of the words ‘artificer of day and night’
is literally true according to Plato’s view. For the alternation
of day and night is not produced by the motion of the heavens
alone, or by the immobility of the earth alone, but by both
together; and that which has the inherent force or energy to
remain at rest when all other bodies are moving, may be truly
said to act, equally with them. (6) We should not lay too much
stress on Aristotle or the writer De Caelo having adopted the
other interpretation of the words, although Alexander of
Aphrodisias thinks that he could not have been ignorant either of
the doctrine of Plato or of the sense which he intended to give
to the word (Greek). For the citations of Plato in Aristotle are
frequently misinterpreted by him; and he seems hardly ever to
have had in his mind the connection in which they occur. In this
instance the allusion is very slight, and there is no reason to
suppose that the diurnal revolution of the heavens was present to
his mind. Hence we need not attribute to him the error from which
we are defending Plato.
After weighing one against the other all these complicated
probabilities, the final conclusion at which we arrive is that
there is nearly as much to be said on the one side of the
question as on the other, and that we are not perfectly certain,
whether, as Bockh and the majority of commentators, ancient as
well as modern, are inclined to believe, Plato thought that the
earth was at rest in the centre of the universe, or, as Aristotle
and Mr. Grote suppose, that it revolved on its axis. Whether we
assume the earth to be stationary in the centre of the universe,
or to revolve with the heavens, no explanation is given of the
variation in the length of days and nights at different times of
the year. The relations of the earth and heavens are so
indistinct in the Timaeus and so figurative in the Phaedo,
Phaedrus and Republic, that we must give up the hope of
ascertaining how they were imagined by Plato, if he had any fixed
or scientific conception of them at all.
Section 5.
The soul of the world is framed on the analogy of the soul of
man, and many traces of anthropomorphism blend with Plato’s
highest flights of idealism. The heavenly bodies are endowed with
thought; the principles of the same and other exist in the
universe as well as in the human mind. The soul of man is made
out of the remains of the elements which had been used in
creating the soul of the world; these remains, however, are
diluted to the third degree; by this Plato expresses the measure
of the difference between the soul human and divine. The human
soul, like the cosmical, is framed before the body, as the mind
is before the soul of either—this is the order of the divine
work—and the finer parts of the body, which are more akin to the
soul, such as the spinal marrow, are prior to the bones and
flesh. The brain, the containing vessel of the divine part of the
soul, is (nearly) in the form of a globe, which is the image of
the gods, who are the stars, and of the universe.
There is, however, an inconsistency in Plato’s manner of
conceiving the soul of man; he cannot get rid of the element of
necessity which is allowed to enter. He does not, like Kant,
attempt to vindicate for men a freedom out of space and time; but
he acknowledges him to be subject to the influence of external
causes, and leaves hardly any place for freedom of the will. The
lusts of men are caused by their bodily constitution, though they
may be increased by bad education and bad laws, which implies
that they may be decreased by good education and good laws. He
appears to have an inkling of the truth that to the higher nature
of man evil is involuntary. This is mixed up with the view which,
while apparently agreeing with it, is in reality the opposite of
it, that vice is due to physical causes. In the Timaeus, as well
as in the Laws, he also regards vices and crimes as simply
involuntary; they are diseases analogous to the diseases of the
body, and arising out of the same causes. If we draw together the
opposite poles of Plato’s system, we find that, like Spinoza, he
combines idealism with fatalism.
The soul of man is divided by him into three parts, answering
roughly to the charioteer and steeds of the Phaedrus, and to the
(Greek) of the Republic and Nicomachean Ethics. First, there is
the immortal nature of which the brain is the seat, and which is
akin to the soul of the universe. This alone thinks and knows and
is the ruler of the whole. Secondly, there is the higher mortal
soul which, though liable to perturbations of her own, takes the
side of reason against the lower appetites. The seat of this is
the heart, in which courage, anger, and all the nobler affections
are supposed to reside. There the veins all meet; it is their
centre or house of guard whence they carry the orders of the
thinking being to the extremities of his kingdom. There is also a
third or appetitive soul, which receives the commands of the
immortal part, not immediately but mediately, through the liver,
which reflects on its surface the admonitions and threats of the
reason.
The liver is imagined by Plato to be a smooth and bright
substance, having a store of sweetness and also of bitterness,
which reason freely uses in the execution of her mandates. In
this region, as ancient superstition told, were to be found
intimations of the future. But Plato is careful to observe that
although such knowledge is given to the inferior parts of man, it
requires to be interpreted by the superior. Reason, and not
enthusiasm, is the true guide of man; he is only inspired when he
is demented by some distemper or possession. The ancient saying,
that ‘only a man in his senses can judge of his own actions,’ is
approved by modern philosophy too. The same irony which appears
in Plato’s remark, that ‘the men of old time must surely have
known the gods who were their ancestors, and we should believe
them as custom requires,’ is also manifest in his account of
divination.
The appetitive soul is seated in the belly, and there imprisoned
like a wild beast, far away from the council chamber, as Plato
graphically calls the head, in order that the animal passions may
not interfere with the deliberations of reason. Though the soul
is said by him to be prior to the body, yet we cannot help seeing
that it is constructed on the model of the body—the threefold
division into the rational, passionate, and appetitive
corresponding to the head, heart and belly. The human soul
differs from the soul of the world in this respect, that it is
enveloped and finds its expression in matter, whereas the soul of
the world is not only enveloped or diffused in matter, but is the
element in which matter moves. The breath of man is within him,
but the air or aether of heaven is the element which surrounds
him and all things.
Pleasure and pain are attributed in the Timaeus to the suddenness
of our sensations—the first being a sudden restoration, the
second a sudden violation, of nature (Phileb.). The sensations
become conscious to us when they are exceptional. Sight is not
attended either by pleasure or pain, but hunger and the appeasing
of hunger are pleasant and painful because they are
extraordinary.
Section 6.
I shall not attempt to connect the physiological speculations of
Plato either with ancient or modern medicine. What light I can
throw upon them will be derived from the comparison of them with
his general system.
There is no principle so apparent in the physics of the Timaeus,
or in ancient physics generally, as that of continuity. The world
is conceived of as a whole, and the elements are formed into and
out of one another; the varieties of substances and processes are
hardly known or noticed. And in a similar manner the human body
is conceived of as a whole, and the different substances of
which, to a superficial observer, it appears to be composed—the
blood, flesh, sinews—like the elements out of which they are
formed, are supposed to pass into one another in regular order,
while the infinite complexity of the human frame remains
unobserved. And diseases arise from the opposite process—when the
natural proportions of the four elements are disturbed, and the
secondary substances which are formed out of them, namely, blood,
flesh, sinews, are generated in an inverse order.
Plato found heat and air within the human frame, and the blood
circulating in every part. He assumes in language almost
unintelligible to us that a network of fire and air envelopes the
greater part of the body. This outer net contains two lesser
nets, one corresponding to the stomach, the other to the lungs;
and the entrance to the latter is forked or divided into two
passages which lead to the nostrils and to the mouth. In the
process of respiration the external net is said to find a way in
and out of the pores of the skin: while the interior of it and
the lesser nets move alternately into each other. The whole
description is figurative, as Plato himself implies when he
speaks of a ‘fountain of fire which we compare to the network of
a creel.’ He really means by this what we should describe as a
state of heat or temperature in the interior of the body. The
‘fountain of fire’ or heat is also in a figure the circulation of
the blood. The passage is partly imagination, partly fact.
He has a singular theory of respiration for which he accounts
solely by the movement of the air in and out of the body; he does
not attribute any part of the process to the action of the body
itself. The air has a double ingress and a double exit, through
the mouth or nostrils, and through the skin. When exhaled through
the mouth or nostrils, it leaves a vacuum which is filled up by
other air finding a way in through the pores, this air being
thrust out of its place by the exhalation from the mouth and
nostrils. There is also a corresponding process of inhalation
through the mouth or nostrils, and of exhalation through the
pores. The inhalation through the pores appears to take place
nearly at the same time as the exhalation through the mouth; and
conversely. The internal fire is in either case the propelling
cause outwards—the inhaled air, when heated by it, having a
natural tendency to move out of the body to the place of fire;
while the impossibility of a vacuum is the propelling cause
inwards.
Thus we see that this singular theory is dependent on two
principles largely employed by Plato in explaining the operations
of nature, the impossibility of a vacuum and the attraction of
like to like. To these there has to be added a third principle,
which is the condition of the action of the other two,—the
interpenetration of particles in proportion to their density or
rarity. It is this which enables fire and air to permeate the
flesh.
Plato’s account of digestion and the circulation of the blood is
closely connected with his theory of respiration. Digestion is
supposed to be effected by the action of the internal fire, which
in the process of respiration moves into the stomach and minces
the food. As the fire returns to its place, it takes with it the
minced food or blood; and in this way the veins are replenished.
Plato does not enquire how the blood is separated from the
faeces.
Of the anatomy and functions of the body he knew very
little,—e.g. of the uses of the nerves in conveying motion and
sensation, which he supposed to be communicated by the bones and
veins; he was also ignorant of the distinction between veins and
arteries;—the latter term he applies to the vessels which conduct
air from the mouth to the lungs;—he supposes the lung to be
hollow and bloodless; the spinal marrow he conceives to be the
seed of generation; he confuses the parts of the body with the
states of the body—the network of fire and air is spoken of as a
bodily organ; he has absolutely no idea of the phenomena of
respiration, which he attributes to a law of equalization in
nature, the air which is breathed out displacing other air which
finds a way in; he is wholly unacquainted with the process of
digestion. Except the general divisions into the spleen, the
liver, the belly, and the lungs, and the obvious distinctions of
flesh, bones, and the limbs of the body, we find nothing that
reminds us of anatomical facts. But we find much which is derived
from his theory of the universe, and transferred to man, as there
is much also in his theory of the universe which is suggested by
man. The microcosm of the human body is the lesser image of the
macrocosm. The courses of the same and the other affect both;
they are made of the same elements and therefore in the same
proportions. Both are intelligent natures endued with the power
of self-motion, and the same equipoise is maintained in both. The
animal is a sort of ‘world’ to the particles of the blood which
circulate in it. All the four elements entered into the original
composition of the human frame; the bone was formed out of smooth
earth; liquids of various kinds pass to and fro; the network of
fire and air irrigates the veins. Infancy and childhood is the
chaos or first turbid flux of sense prior to the establishment of
order; the intervals of time which may be observed in some
intermittent fevers correspond to the density of the elements.
The spinal marrow, including the brain, is formed out of the
finest sorts of triangles, and is the connecting link between
body and mind. Health is only to be preserved by imitating the
motions of the world in space, which is the mother and nurse of
generation. The work of digestion is carried on by the superior
sharpness of the triangles forming the substances of the human
body to those which are introduced into it in the shape of food.
The freshest and acutest forms of triangles are those that are
found in children, but they become more obtuse with advancing
years; and when they finally wear out and fall to pieces, old age
and death supervene.
As in the Republic, Plato is still the enemy of the purgative
treatment of physicians, which, except in extreme cases, no man
of sense will ever adopt. For, as he adds, with an insight into
the truth, ‘every disease is akin to the nature of the living
being and is only irritated by stimulants.’ He is of opinion that
nature should be left to herself, and is inclined to think that
physicians are in vain (Laws—where he says that warm baths would
be more beneficial to the limbs of the aged rustic than the
prescriptions of a not over-wise doctor). If he seems to be
extreme in his condemnation of medicine and to rely too much on
diet and exercise, he might appeal to nearly all the best
physicians of our own age in support of his opinions, who often
speak to their patients of the worthlessness of drugs. For we
ourselves are sceptical about medicine, and very unwilling to
submit to the purgative treatment of physicians. May we not claim
for Plato an anticipation of modern ideas as about some questions
of astronomy and physics, so also about medicine? As in the
Charmides he tells us that the body cannot be cured without the
soul, so in the Timaeus he strongly asserts the sympathy of soul
and body; any defect of either is the occasion of the greatest
discord and disproportion in the other. Here too may be a
presentiment that in the medicine of the future the
interdependence of mind and body will be more fully recognized,
and that the influence of the one over the other may be exerted
in a manner which is not now thought possible.
Section 7.
In Plato’s explanation of sensation we are struck by the fact
that he has not the same distinct conception of organs of sense
which is familiar to ourselves. The senses are not instruments,
but rather passages, through which external objects strike upon
the mind. The eye is the aperture through which the stream of
vision passes, the ear is the aperture through which the
vibrations of sound pass. But that the complex structure of the
eye or the ear is in any sense the cause of sight and hearing he
seems hardly to be aware.
The process of sight is the most complicated (Rep.), and consists
of three elements—the light which is supposed to reside within
the eye, the light of the sun, and the light emitted from
external objects. When the light of the eye meets the light of
the sun, and both together meet the light issuing from an
external object, this is the simple act of sight. When the
particles of light which proceed from the object are exactly
equal to the particles of the visual ray which meet them from
within, then the body is transparent. If they are larger and
contract the visual ray, a black colour is produced; if they are
smaller and dilate it, a white. Other phenomena are produced by
the variety and motion of light. A sudden flash of fire at once
elicits light and moisture from the eye, and causes a bright
colour. A more subdued light, on mingling with the moisture of
the eye, produces a red colour. Out of these elements all other
colours are derived. All of them are combinations of bright and
red with white and black. Plato himself tells us that he does not
know in what proportions they combine, and he is of opinion that
such knowledge is granted to the gods only. To have seen the
affinity of them to each other and their connection with light,
is not a bad basis for a theory of colours. We must remember that
they were not distinctly defined to his, as they are to our eyes;
he saw them, not as they are divided in the prism, or
artificially manufactured for the painter’s use, but as they
exist in nature, blended and confused with one another.
We can hardly agree with him when he tells us that smells do not
admit of kinds. He seems to think that no definite qualities can
attach to bodies which are in a state of transition or
evaporation; he also makes the subtle observation that smells
must be denser than air, though thinner than water, because when
there is an obstruction to the breathing, air can penetrate, but
not smell.
The affections peculiar to the tongue are of various kinds, and,
like many other affections, are caused by contraction and
dilation. Some of them are produced by rough, others by
abstergent, others by inflammatory substances,—these act upon the
testing instruments of the tongue, and produce a more or less
disagreeable sensation, while other particles congenial to the
tongue soften and harmonize them. The instruments of taste reach
from the tongue to the heart. Plato has a lively sense of the
manner in which sensation and motion are communicated from one
part of the body to the other, though he confuses the affections
with the organs. Hearing is a blow which passes through the ear
and ends in the region of the liver, being transmitted by means
of the air, the brain, and the blood to the soul. The swifter
sound is acute, the sound which moves slowly is grave. A great
body of sound is loud, the opposite is low. Discord is produced
by the swifter and slower motions of two sounds, and is converted
into harmony when the swifter motions begin to pause and are
overtaken by the slower.
The general phenomena of sensation are partly internal, but the
more violent are caused by conflict with external objects.
Proceeding by a method of superficial observation, Plato remarks
that the more sensitive parts of the human frame are those which
are least covered by flesh, as is the case with the head and the
elbows. Man, if his head had been covered with a thicker pulp of
flesh, might have been a longer-lived animal than he is, but
could not have had as quick perceptions. On the other hand, the
tongue is one of the most sensitive of organs; but then this is
made, not to be a covering to the bones which contain the marrow
or source of life, but with an express purpose, and in a separate
mass.
Section 8.
We have now to consider how far in any of these speculations
Plato approximated to the discoveries of modern science. The
modern physical philosopher is apt to dwell exclusively on the
absurdities of ancient ideas about science, on the haphazard
fancies and a priori assumptions of ancient teachers, on their
confusion of facts and ideas, on their inconsistency and
blindness to the most obvious phenomena. He measures them not by
what preceded them, but by what has followed them. He does not
consider that ancient physical philosophy was not a free enquiry,
but a growth, in which the mind was passive rather than active,
and was incapable of resisting the impressions which flowed in
upon it. He hardly allows to the notions of the ancients the
merit of being the stepping-stones by which he has himself risen
to a higher knowledge. He never reflects, how great a thing it
was to have formed a conception, however imperfect, either of the
human frame as a whole, or of the world as a whole. According to
the view taken in these volumes the errors of ancient physicists
were not separable from the intellectual conditions under which
they lived. Their genius was their own; and they were not the
rash and hasty generalizers which, since the days of Bacon, we
have been apt to suppose them. The thoughts of men widened to
receive experience; at first they seemed to know all things as in
a dream: after a while they look at them closely and hold them in
their hands. They begin to arrange them in classes and to connect
causes with effects. General notions are necessary to the
apprehension of particular facts, the metaphysical to the
physical. Before men can observe the world, they must be able to
conceive it.
To do justice to the subject, we should consider the physical
philosophy of the ancients as a whole; we should remember, (1)
that the nebular theory was the received belief of several of the
early physicists; (2) that the development of animals out of
fishes who came to land, and of man out of the animals, was held
by Anaximander in the sixth century before Christ (Plut. Symp.
Quaest; Plac. Phil.); (3) that even by Philolaus and the early
Pythagoreans, the earth was held to be a body like the other
stars revolving in space around the sun or a central fire; (4)
that the beginnings of chemistry are discernible in the ‘similar
particles’ of Anaxagoras. Also they knew or thought (5) that
there was a sex in plants as well as in animals; (6) they were
aware that musical notes depended on the relative length or
tension of the strings from which they were emitted, and were
measured by ratios of number; (7) that mathematical laws pervaded
the world; and even qualitative differences were supposed to have
their origin in number and figure; (8) the annihilation of matter
was denied by several of them, and the seeming disappearance of
it held to be a transformation only. For, although one of these
discoveries might have been supposed to be a happy guess, taken
together they seem to imply a great advance and almost maturity
of natural knowledge.
We should also remember, when we attribute to the ancients hasty
generalizations and delusions of language, that physical
philosophy and metaphysical too have been guilty of similar
fallacies in quite recent times. We by no means distinguish
clearly between mind and body, between ideas and facts. Have not
many discussions arisen about the Atomic theory in which a point
has been confused with a material atom? Have not the natures of
things been explained by imaginary entities, such as life or
phlogiston, which exist in the mind only? Has not disease been
regarded, like sin, sometimes as a negative and necessary,
sometimes as a positive or malignant principle? The ‘idols’ of
Bacon are nearly as common now as ever; they are inherent in the
human mind, and when they have the most complete dominion over
us, we are least able to perceive them. We recognize them in the
ancients, but we fail to see them in ourselves.
Such reflections, although this is not the place in which to
dwell upon them at length, lead us to take a favourable view of
the speculations of the Timaeus. We should consider not how much
Plato actually knew, but how far he has contributed to the
general ideas of physics, or supplied the notions which, whether
true or false, have stimulated the minds of later generations in
the path of discovery. Some of them may seem old-fashioned, but
may nevertheless have had a great influence in promoting system
and assisting enquiry, while in others we hear the latest word of
physical or metaphysical philosophy. There is also an
intermediate class, in which Plato falls short of the truths of
modern science, though he is not wholly unacquainted with them.
(1) To the first class belongs the teleological theory of
creation. Whether all things in the world can be explained as the
result of natural laws, or whether we must not admit of
tendencies and marks of design also, has been a question much
disputed of late years. Even if all phenomena are the result of
natural forces, we must admit that there are many things in
heaven and earth which are as well expressed under the image of
mind or design as under any other. At any rate, the language of
Plato has been the language of natural theology down to our own
time, nor can any description of the world wholly dispense with
it. The notion of first and second or co-operative causes, which
originally appears in the Timaeus, has likewise survived to our
own day, and has been a great peace-maker between theology and
science. Plato also approaches very near to our doctrine of the
primary and secondary qualities of matter. (2) Another popular
notion which is found in the Timaeus, is the feebleness of the
human intellect—‘God knows the original qualities of things; man
can only hope to attain to probability.’ We speak in almost the
same words of human intelligence, but not in the same manner of
the uncertainty of our knowledge of nature. The reason is that
the latter is assured to us by experiment, and is not contrasted
with the certainty of ideal or mathematical knowledge. But the
ancient philosopher never experimented: in the Timaeus Plato
seems to have thought that there would be impiety in making the
attempt; he, for example, who tried experiments in colours would
‘forget the difference of the human and divine natures.’ Their
indefiniteness is probably the reason why he singles them out, as
especially incapable of being tested by experiment. (Compare the
saying of Anaxagoras—Sext. Pyrrh.—that since snow is made of
water and water is black, snow ought to be black.)
The greatest ‘divination’ of the ancients was the supremacy which
they assigned to mathematics in all the realms of nature; for in
all of them there is a foundation of mechanics. Even physiology
partakes of figure and number; and Plato is not wrong in
attributing them to the human frame, but in the omission to
observe how little could be explained by them. Thus we may remark
in passing that the most fanciful of ancient philosophies is also
the most nearly verified in fact. The fortunate guess that the
world is a sum of numbers and figures has been the most fruitful
of anticipations. The ‘diatonic’ scale of the Pythagoreans and
Plato suggested to Kepler that the secret of the distances of the
planets from one another was to be found in mathematical
proportions. The doctrine that the heavenly bodies all move in a
circle is known by us to be erroneous; but without such an error
how could the human mind have comprehended the heavens?
Astronomy, even in modern times, has made far greater progress by
the high a priori road than could have been attained by any
other. Yet, strictly speaking—and the remark applies to ancient
physics generally—this high a priori road was based upon a
posteriori grounds. For there were no facts of which the ancients
were so well assured by experience as facts of number. Having
observed that they held good in a few instances, they applied
them everywhere; and in the complexity, of which they were
capable, found the explanation of the equally complex phenomena
of the universe. They seemed to see them in the least things as
well as in the greatest; in atoms, as well as in suns and stars;
in the human body as well as in external nature. And now a
favourite speculation of modern chemistry is the explanation of
qualitative difference by quantitative, which is at present
verified to a certain extent and may hereafter be of far more
universal application. What is this but the atoms of Democritus
and the triangles of Plato? The ancients should not be wholly
deprived of the credit of their guesses because they were unable
to prove them. May they not have had, like the animals, an
instinct of something more than they knew?
Besides general notions we seem to find in the Timaeus some more
precise approximations to the discoveries of modern physical
science. First, the doctrine of equipoise. Plato affirms, almost
in so many words, that nature abhors a vacuum. Whenever a
particle is displaced, the rest push and thrust one another until
equality is restored. We must remember that these ideas were not
derived from any definite experiment, but were the original
reflections of man, fresh from the first observation of nature.
The latest word of modern philosophy is continuity and
development, but to Plato this is the beginning and foundation of
science; there is nothing that he is so strongly persuaded of as
that the world is one, and that all the various existences which
are contained in it are only the transformations of the same soul
of the world acting on the same matter. He would have readily
admitted that out of the protoplasm all things were formed by the
gradual process of creation; but he would have insisted that mind
and intelligence—not meaning by this, however, a conscious mind
or person—were prior to them, and could alone have created them.
Into the workings of this eternal mind or intelligence he does
not enter further; nor would there have been any use in
attempting to investigate the things which no eye has seen nor
any human language can express.
Lastly, there remain two points in which he seems to touch great
discoveries of modern times—the law of gravitation, and the
circulation of the blood.
(1) The law of gravitation, according to Plato, is a law, not
only of the attraction of lesser bodies to larger ones, but of
similar bodies to similar, having a magnetic power as well as a
principle of gravitation. He observed that earth, water, and air
had settled down to their places, and he imagined fire or the
exterior aether to have a place beyond air. When air seemed to go
upwards and fire to pierce through air—when water and earth fell
downward, they were seeking their native elements. He did not
remark that his own explanation did not suit all phenomena; and
the simpler explanation, which assigns to bodies degrees of
heaviness and lightness proportioned to the mass and distance of
the bodies which attract them, never occurred to him. Yet the
affinities of similar substances have some effect upon the
composition of the world, and of this Plato may be thought to
have had an anticipation. He may be described as confusing the
attraction of gravitation with the attraction of cohesion. The
influence of such affinities and the chemical action of one body
upon another in long periods of time have become a recognized
principle of geology.
(2) Plato is perfectly aware—and he could hardly be ignorant—that
blood is a fluid in constant motion. He also knew that blood is
partly a solid substance consisting of several elements, which,
as he might have observed in the use of ‘cupping-glasses’,
decompose and die, when no longer in motion. But the specific
discovery that the blood flows out on one side of the heart
through the arteries and returns through the veins on the other,
which is commonly called the circulation of the blood, was
absolutely unknown to him.
A further study of the Timaeus suggests some after-thoughts which
may be conveniently brought together in this place. The topics
which I propose briefly to reconsider are (a) the relation of the
Timaeus to the other dialogues of Plato and to the previous
philosophy; (b) the nature of God and of creation (c) the
morality of the Timaeus:—
(a) The Timaeus is more imaginative and less scientific than any
other of the Platonic dialogues. It is conjectural astronomy,
conjectural natural philosophy, conjectural medicine. The writer
himself is constantly repeating that he is speaking what is
probable only. The dialogue is put into the mouth of Timaeus, a
Pythagorean philosopher, and therefore here, as in the
Parmenides, we are in doubt how far Plato is expressing his own
sentiments. Hence the connexion with the other dialogues is
comparatively slight. We may fill up the lacunae of the Timaeus
by the help of the Republic or Phaedrus: we may identify the same
and other with the (Greek) of the Philebus. We may find in the
Laws or in the Statesman parallels with the account of creation
and of the first origin of man. It would be possible to frame a
scheme in which all these various elements might have a place.
But such a mode of proceeding would be unsatisfactory, because we
have no reason to suppose that Plato intended his scattered
thoughts to be collected in a system. There is a common spirit in
his writings, and there are certain general principles, such as
the opposition of the sensible and intellectual, and the priority
of mind, which run through all of them; but he has no definite
forms of words in which he consistently expresses himself. While
the determinations of human thought are in process of creation he
is necessarily tentative and uncertain. And there is least of
definiteness, whenever either in describing the beginning or the
end of the world, he has recourse to myths. These are not the
fixed modes in which spiritual truths are revealed to him, but
the efforts of imagination, by which at different times and in
various manners he seeks to embody his conceptions. The clouds of
mythology are still resting upon him, and he has not yet pierced
‘to the heaven of the fixed stars’ which is beyond them. It is
safer then to admit the inconsistencies of the Timaeus, or to
endeavour to fill up what is wanting from our own imagination,
inspired by a study of the dialogue, than to refer to other
Platonic writings,—and still less should we refer to the
successors of Plato,—for the elucidation of it.
More light is thrown upon the Timaeus by a comparison of the
previous philosophies. For the physical science of the ancients
was traditional, descending through many generations of Ionian
and Pythagorean philosophers. Plato does not look out upon the
heavens and describe what he sees in them, but he builds upon the
foundations of others, adding something out of the ‘depths of his
own self-consciousness.’ Socrates had already spoken of God the
creator, who made all things for the best. While he ridiculed the
superficial explanations of phenomena which were current in his
age, he recognised the marks both of benevolence and of design in
the frame of man and in the world. The apparatus of winds and
waters is contemptuously rejected by him in the Phaedo, but he
thinks that there is a power greater than that of any Atlas in
the ‘Best’ (Phaedo; Arist. Met.). Plato, following his master,
affirms this principle of the best, but he acknowledges that the
best is limited by the conditions of matter. In the generation
before Socrates, Anaxagoras had brought together ‘Chaos’ and
‘Mind’; and these are connected by Plato in the Timaeus, but in
accordance with his own mode of thinking he has interposed
between them the idea or pattern according to which mind worked.
The circular impulse (Greek) of the one philosopher answers to
the circular movement (Greek) of the other. But unlike
Anaxagoras, Plato made the sun and stars living beings and not
masses of earth or metal. The Pythagoreans again had framed a
world out of numbers, which they constructed into figures. Plato
adopted their speculations and improved upon them by a more exact
knowledge of geometry. The Atomists too made the world, if not
out of geometrical figures, at least out of different forms of
atoms, and these atoms resembled the triangles of Plato in being
too small to be visible. But though the physiology of the Timaeus
is partly borrowed from them, they are either ignored by Plato or
referred to with a secret contempt and dislike. He looks with
more favour on the Pythagoreans, whose intervals of number
applied to the distances of the planets reappear in the Timaeus.
It is probable that among the Pythagoreans living in the fourth
century B.C., there were already some who, like Plato, made the
earth their centre. Whether he obtained his circles of the Same
and Other from any previous thinker is uncertain. The four
elements are taken from Empedocles; the interstices of the
Timaeus may also be compared with his (Greek). The passage of one
element into another is common to Heracleitus and several of the
Ionian philosophers. So much of a syncretist is Plato, though not
after the manner of the Neoplatonists. For the elements which he
borrows from others are fused and transformed by his own genius.
On the other hand we find fewer traces in Plato of early Ionic or
Eleatic speculation. He does not imagine the world of sense to be
made up of opposites or to be in a perpetual flux, but to vary
within certain limits which are controlled by what he calls the
principle of the same. Unlike the Eleatics, who relegated the
world to the sphere of not-being, he admits creation to have an
existence which is real and even eternal, although dependent on
the will of the creator. Instead of maintaining the doctrine that
the void has a necessary place in the existence of the world, he
rather affirms the modern thesis that nature abhors a vacuum, as
in the Sophist he also denies the reality of not-being (Aristot.
Metaph.). But though in these respects he differs from them, he
is deeply penetrated by the spirit of their philosophy; he
differs from them with reluctance, and gladly recognizes the
‘generous depth’ of Parmenides (Theaet.).
There is a similarity between the Timaeus and the fragments of
Philolaus, which by some has been thought to be so great as to
create a suspicion that they are derived from it. Philolaus is
known to us from the Phaedo of Plato as a Pythagorean philosopher
residing at Thebes in the latter half of the fifth century B.C.,
after the dispersion of the original Pythagorean society. He was
the teacher of Simmias and Cebes, who became disciples of
Socrates. We have hardly any other information about him. The
story that Plato had purchased three books of his writings from a
relation is not worth repeating; it is only a fanciful way in
which an ancient biographer dresses up the fact that there was
supposed to be a resemblance between the two writers. Similar
gossiping stories are told about the sources of the Republic and
the Phaedo. That there really existed in antiquity a work passing
under the name of Philolaus there can be no doubt. Fragments of
this work are preserved to us, chiefly in Stobaeus, a few in
Boethius and other writers. They remind us of the Timaeus, as
well as of the Phaedrus and Philebus. When the writer says (Stob.
Eclog.) that all things are either finite (definite) or infinite
(indefinite), or a union of the two, and that this antithesis and
synthesis pervades all art and nature, we are reminded of the
Philebus. When he calls the centre of the world (Greek), we have
a parallel to the Phaedrus. His distinction between the world of
order, to which the sun and moon and the stars belong, and the
world of disorder, which lies in the region between the moon and
the earth, approximates to Plato’s sphere of the Same and of the
Other. Like Plato (Tim.), he denied the above and below in space,
and said that all things were the same in relation to a centre.
He speaks also of the world as one and indestructible: ‘for
neither from within nor from without does it admit of
destruction’ (Tim). He mentions ten heavenly bodies, including
the sun and moon, the earth and the counter-earth (Greek), and in
the midst of them all he places the central fire, around which
they are moving—this is hidden from the earth by the
counter-earth. Of neither is there any trace in Plato, who makes
the earth the centre of his system. Philolaus magnifies the
virtues of particular numbers, especially of the number 10 (Stob.
Eclog.), and descants upon odd and even numbers, after the manner
of the later Pythagoreans. It is worthy of remark that these
mystical fancies are nowhere to be found in the writings of
Plato, although the importance of number as a form and also an
instrument of thought is ever present to his mind. Both Philolaus
and Plato agree in making the world move in certain numerical
ratios according to a musical scale: though Bockh is of opinion
that the two scales, of Philolaus and of the Timaeus, do not
correspond...We appear not to be sufficiently acquainted with the
early Pythagoreans to know how far the statements contained in
these fragments corresponded with their doctrines; and we
therefore cannot pronounce, either in favour of the genuineness
of the fragments, with Bockh and Zeller, or, with Valentine Rose
and Schaarschmidt, against them. But it is clear that they throw
but little light upon the Timaeus, and that their resemblance to
it has been exaggerated.
That there is a degree of confusion and indistinctness in Plato’s
account both of man and of the universe has been already
acknowledged. We cannot tell (nor could Plato himself have told)
where the figure or myth ends and the philosophical truth begins;
we cannot explain (nor could Plato himself have explained to us)
the relation of the ideas to appearance, of which one is the copy
of the other, and yet of all things in the world they are the
most opposed and unlike. This opposition is presented to us in
many forms, as the antithesis of the one and many, of the finite
and infinite, of the intelligible and sensible, of the
unchangeable and the changing, of the indivisible and the
divisible, of the fixed stars and the planets, of the creative
mind and the primeval chaos. These pairs of opposites are so many
aspects of the great opposition between ideas and phenomena—they
easily pass into one another; and sometimes the two members of
the relation differ in kind, sometimes only in degree. As in
Aristotle’s matter and form the connexion between them is really
inseparable; for if we attempt to separate them they become
devoid of content and therefore indistinguishable; there is no
difference between the idea of which nothing can be predicated,
and the chaos or matter which has no perceptible
qualities—between Being in the abstract and Nothing. Yet we are
frequently told that the one class of them is the reality and the
other appearance; and one is often spoken of as the double or
reflection of the other. For Plato never clearly saw that both
elements had an equal place in mind and in nature; and hence,
especially when we argue from isolated passages in his writings,
or attempt to draw what appear to us to be the natural inferences
from them, we are full of perplexity. There is a similar
confusion about necessity and free-will, and about the state of
the soul after death. Also he sometimes supposes that God is
immanent in the world, sometimes that he is transcendent. And
having no distinction of objective and subjective, he passes
imperceptibly from one to the other; from intelligence to soul,
from eternity to time. These contradictions may be softened or
concealed by a judicious use of language, but they cannot be
wholly got rid of. That an age of intellectual transition must
also be one of inconsistency; that the creative is opposed to the
critical or defining habit of mind or time, has been often
repeated by us. But, as Plato would say, ‘there is no harm in
repeating twice or thrice’ (Laws) what is important for the
understanding of a great author.
It has not, however, been observed, that the confusion partly
arises out of the elements of opposing philosophies which are
preserved in him. He holds these in solution, he brings them into
relation with one another, but he does not perfectly harmonize
them. They are part of his own mind, and he is incapable of
placing himself outside of them and criticizing them. They grow
as he grows; they are a kind of composition with which his own
philosophy is overlaid. In early life he fancies that he has
mastered them: but he is also mastered by them; and in language
(Sophist) which may be compared with the hesitating tone of the
Timaeus, he confesses in his later years that they are full of
obscurity to him. He attributes new meanings to the words of
Parmenides and Heracleitus; but at times the old Eleatic
philosophy appears to go beyond him; then the world of phenomena
disappears, but the doctrine of ideas is also reduced to
nothingness. All of them are nearer to one another than they
themselves supposed, and nearer to him than he supposed. All of
them are antagonistic to sense and have an affinity to number and
measure and a presentiment of ideas. Even in Plato they still
retain their contentious or controversial character, which was
developed by the growth of dialectic. He is never able to
reconcile the first causes of the pre-Socratic philosophers with
the final causes of Socrates himself. There is no intelligible
account of the relation of numbers to the universal ideas, or of
universals to the idea of good. He found them all three, in the
Pythagorean philosophy and in the teaching of Socrates and of the
Megarians respectively; and, because they all furnished modes of
explaining and arranging phenomena, he is unwilling to give up
any of them, though he is unable to unite them in a consistent
whole.
Lastly, Plato, though an idealist philosopher, is Greek and not
Oriental in spirit and feeling. He is no mystic or ascetic; he is
not seeking in vain to get rid of matter or to find absorption in
the divine nature, or in the Soul of the universe. And therefore
we are not surprised to find that his philosophy in the Timaeus
returns at last to a worship of the heavens, and that to him, as
to other Greeks, nature, though containing a remnant of evil, is
still glorious and divine. He takes away or drops the veil of
mythology, and presents her to us in what appears to him to be
the form-fairer and truer far—of mathematical figures. It is this
element in the Timaeus, no less than its affinity to certain
Pythagorean speculations, which gives it a character not wholly
in accordance with the other dialogues of Plato.
(b) The Timaeus contains an assertion perhaps more distinct than
is found in any of the other dialogues (Rep.; Laws) of the
goodness of God. ‘He was good himself, and he fashioned the good
everywhere.’ He was not ‘a jealous God,’ and therefore he desired
that all other things should be equally good. He is the IDEA of
good who has now become a person, and speaks and is spoken of as
God. Yet his personality seems to appear only in the act of
creation. In so far as he works with his eye fixed upon an
eternal pattern he is like the human artificer in the Republic.
Here the theory of Platonic ideas intrudes upon us. God, like
man, is supposed to have an ideal of which Plato is unable to
tell us the origin. He may be said, in the language of modern
philosophy, to resolve the divine mind into subject and object.
The first work of creation is perfected, the second begins under
the direction of inferior ministers. The supreme God is withdrawn
from the world and returns to his own accustomed nature (Tim.).
As in the Statesman, he retires to his place of view. So early
did the Epicurean doctrine take possession of the Greek mind, and
so natural is it to the heart of man, when he has once passed out
of the stage of mythology into that of rational religion. For he
sees the marks of design in the world; but he no longer sees or
fancies that he sees God walking in the garden or haunting stream
or mountain. He feels also that he must put God as far as
possible out of the way of evil, and therefore he banishes him
from an evil world. Plato is sensible of the difficulty; and he
often shows that he is desirous of justifying the ways of God to
man. Yet on the other hand, in the Tenth Book of the Laws he
passes a censure on those who say that the Gods have no care of
human things.
The creation of the world is the impression of order on a
previously existing chaos. The formula of Anaxagoras—‘all things
were in chaos or confusion, and then mind came and disposed
them’—is a summary of the first part of the Timaeus. It is true
that of a chaos without differences no idea could be formed. All
was not mixed but one; and therefore it was not difficult for the
later Platonists to draw inferences by which they were enabled to
reconcile the narrative of the Timaeus with the Mosaic account of
the creation. Neither when we speak of mind or intelligence, do
we seem to get much further in our conception than circular
motion, which was deemed to be the most perfect. Plato, like
Anaxagoras, while commencing his theory of the universe with
ideas of mind and of the best, is compelled in the execution of
his design to condescend to the crudest physics.
(c) The morality of the Timaeus is singular, and it is difficult
to adjust the balance between the two elements of it. The
difficulty which Plato feels, is that which all of us feel, and
which is increased in our own day by the progress of physical
science, how the responsibility of man is to be reconciled with
his dependence on natural causes. And sometimes, like other men,
he is more impressed by one aspect of human life, sometimes by
the other. In the Republic he represents man as freely choosing
his own lot in a state prior to birth—a conception which, if
taken literally, would still leave him subject to the dominion of
necessity in his after life; in the Statesman he supposes the
human race to be preserved in the world only by a divine
interposition; while in the Timaeus the supreme God commissions
the inferior deities to avert from him all but self-inflicted
evils—words which imply that all the evils of men are really
self-inflicted. And here, like Plato (the insertion of a note in
the text of an ancient writer is a literary curiosity worthy of
remark), we may take occasion to correct an error. For we too
hastily said that Plato in the Timaeus regarded all ‘vices and
crimes as involuntary.’ But the fact is that he is inconsistent
with himself; in one and the same passage vice is attributed to
the relaxation of the bodily frame, and yet we are exhorted to
avoid it and pursue virtue. It is also admitted that good and
evil conduct are to be attributed respectively to good and evil
laws and institutions. These cannot be given by individuals to
themselves; and therefore human actions, in so far as they are
dependent upon them, are regarded by Plato as involuntary rather
than voluntary. Like other writers on this subject, he is unable
to escape from some degree of self-contradiction. He had learned
from Socrates that vice is ignorance, and suddenly the doctrine
seems to him to be confirmed by observing how much of the good
and bad in human character depends on the bodily constitution. So
in modern times the speculative doctrine of necessity has often
been supported by physical facts.
The Timaeus also contains an anticipation of the stoical life
according to nature. Man contemplating the heavens is to regulate
his erring life according to them. He is to partake of the repose
of nature and of the order of nature, to bring the variable
principle in himself into harmony with the principle of the same.
The ethics of the Timaeus may be summed up in the single idea of
‘law.’ To feel habitually that he is part of the order of the
universe, is one of the highest ethical motives of which man is
capable. Something like this is what Plato means when he speaks
of the soul ‘moving about the same in unchanging thought of the
same.’ He does not explain how man is acted upon by the lesser
influences of custom or of opinion; or how the commands of the
soul watching in the citadel are conveyed to the bodily organs.
But this perhaps, to use once more expressions of his own, ‘is
part of another subject’ or ‘may be more suitably discussed on
some other occasion.’
There is no difficulty, by the help of Aristotle and later
writers, in criticizing the Timaeus of Plato, in pointing out the
inconsistencies of the work, in dwelling on the ignorance of
anatomy displayed by the author, in showing the fancifulness or
unmeaningness of some of his reasons. But the Timaeus still
remains the greatest effort of the human mind to conceive the
world as a whole which the genius of antiquity has bequeathed to
us.
One more aspect of the Timaeus remains to be considered—the
mythological or geographical. Is it not a wonderful thing that a
few pages of one of Plato’s dialogues have grown into a great
legend, not confined to Greece only, but spreading far and wide
over the nations of Europe and reaching even to Egypt and Asia?
Like the tale of Troy, or the legend of the Ten Tribes (Ewald,
Hist. of Isr.), which perhaps originated in a few verses of II
Esdras, it has become famous, because it has coincided with a
great historical fact. Like the romance of King Arthur, which has
had so great a charm, it has found a way over the seas from one
country and language to another. It inspired the navigators of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; it foreshadowed the
discovery of America. It realized the fiction so natural to the
human mind, because it answered the enquiry about the origin of
the arts, that there had somewhere existed an ancient primitive
civilization. It might find a place wherever men chose to look
for it; in North, South, East, or West; in the Islands of the
Blest; before the entrance of the Straits of Gibraltar, in Sweden
or in Palestine. It mattered little whether the description in
Plato agreed with the locality assigned to it or not. It was a
legend so adapted to the human mind that it made a habitation for
itself in any country. It was an island in the clouds, which
might be seen anywhere by the eye of faith. It was a subject
especially congenial to the ponderous industry of certain French
and Swedish writers, who delighted in heaping up learning of all
sorts but were incapable of using it.
M. Martin has written a valuable dissertation on the opinions
entertained respecting the Island of Atlantis in ancient and
modern times. It is a curious chapter in the history of the human
mind. The tale of Atlantis is the fabric of a vision, but it has
never ceased to interest mankind. It was variously regarded by
the ancients themselves. The stronger heads among them, like
Strabo and Longinus, were as little disposed to believe in the
truth of it as the modern reader in Gulliver or Robinson Crusoe.
On the other hand there is no kind or degree of absurdity or
fancy in which the more foolish writers, both of antiquity and of
modern times, have not indulged respecting it. The
Neo-Platonists, loyal to their master, like some commentators on
the Christian Scriptures, sought to give an allegorical meaning
to what they also believed to be an historical fact. It was as if
some one in our own day were to convert the poems of Homer into
an allegory of the Christian religion, at the same time
maintaining them to be an exact and veritable history. In the
Middle Ages the legend seems to have been half-forgotten until
revived by the discovery of America. It helped to form the Utopia
of Sir Thomas More and the New Atlantis of Bacon, although
probably neither of those great men were at all imposed upon by
the fiction. It was most prolific in the seventeenth or in the
early part of the eighteenth century, when the human mind,
seeking for Utopias or inventing them, was glad to escape out of
the dulness of the present into the romance of the past or some
ideal of the future. The later forms of such narratives contained
features taken from the Edda, as well as from the Old and New
Testament; also from the tales of missionaries and the
experiences of travellers and of colonists.
The various opinions respecting the Island of Atlantis have no
interest for us except in so far as they illustrate the
extravagances of which men are capable. But this is a real
interest and a serious lesson, if we remember that now as
formerly the human mind is liable to be imposed upon by the
illusions of the past, which are ever assuming some new form.
When we have shaken off the rubbish of ages, there remain one or
two questions of which the investigation has a permanent value:—
1. Did Plato derive the legend of Atlantis from an Egyptian
source? It may be replied that there is no such legend in any
writer previous to Plato; neither in Homer, nor in Pindar, nor in
Herodotus is there any mention of an Island of Atlantis, nor any
reference to it in Aristotle, nor any citation of an earlier
writer by a later one in which it is to be found. Nor have any
traces been discovered hitherto in Egyptian monuments of a
connexion between Greece and Egypt older than the eighth or ninth
century B.C. It is true that Proclus, writing in the fifth
century after Christ, tells us of stones and columns in Egypt on
which the history of the Island of Atlantis was engraved. The
statement may be false—there are similar tales about columns set
up ‘by the Canaanites whom Joshua drove out’ (Procop.); but even
if true, it would only show that the legend, 800 years after the
time of Plato, had been transferred to Egypt, and inscribed, not,
like other forgeries, in books, but on stone. Probably in the
Alexandrian age, when Egypt had ceased to have a history and
began to appropriate the legends of other nations, many such
monuments were to be found of events which had become famous in
that or other countries. The oldest witness to the story is said
to be Crantor, a Stoic philosopher who lived a generation later
than Plato, and therefore may have borrowed it from him. The
statement is found in Proclus; but we require better assurance
than Proclus can give us before we accept this or any other
statement which he makes.
Secondly, passing from the external to the internal evidence, we
may remark that the story is far more likely to have been
invented by Plato than to have been brought by Solon from Egypt.
That is another part of his legend which Plato also seeks to
impose upon us. The verisimilitude which he has given to the tale
is a further reason for suspecting it; for he could easily
‘invent Egyptian or any other tales’ (Phaedrus). Are not the
words, ‘The truth of the story is a great advantage,’ if we read
between the lines, an indication of the fiction? It is only a
legend that Solon went to Egypt, and if he did he could not have
conversed with Egyptian priests or have read records in their
temples. The truth is that the introduction is a mosaic work of
small touches which, partly by their minuteness, and also by
their seeming probability, win the confidence of the reader. Who
would desire better evidence than that of Critias, who had heard
the narrative in youth when the memory is strongest at the age of
ten from his grandfather Critias, an old man of ninety, who in
turn had heard it from Solon himself? Is not the famous
expression—‘You Hellenes are ever children and there is no
knowledge among you hoary with age,’ really a compliment to the
Athenians who are described in these words as ‘ever young’? And
is the thought expressed in them to be attributed to the learning
of the Egyptian priest, and not rather to the genius of Plato? Or
when the Egyptian says—‘Hereafter at our leisure we will take up
the written documents and examine in detail the exact truth about
these things’—what is this but a literary trick by which Plato
sets off his narrative? Could any war between Athens and the
Island of Atlantis have really coincided with the struggle
between the Greeks and Persians, as is sufficiently hinted though
not expressly stated in the narrative of Plato? And whence came
the tradition to Egypt? or in what does the story consist except
in the war between the two rival powers and the submersion of
both of them? And how was the tale transferred to the poem of
Solon? ‘It is not improbable,’ says Mr. Grote, ‘that Solon did
leave an unfinished Egyptian poem’ (Plato). But are probabilities
for which there is not a tittle of evidence, and which are
without any parallel, to be deemed worthy of attention by the
critic? How came the poem of Solon to disappear in antiquity? or
why did Plato, if the whole narrative was known to him, break off
almost at the beginning of it?
While therefore admiring the diligence and erudition of M.
Martin, we cannot for a moment suppose that the tale was told to
Solon by an Egyptian priest, nor can we believe that Solon wrote
a poem upon the theme which was thus suggested to him—a poem
which disappeared in antiquity; or that the Island of Atlantis or
the antediluvian Athens ever had any existence except in the
imagination of Plato. Martin is of opinion that Plato would have
been terrified if he could have foreseen the endless fancies to
which his Island of Atlantis has given occasion. Rather he would
have been infinitely amused if he could have known that his gift
of invention would have deceived M. Martin himself into the
belief that the tradition was brought from Egypt by Solon and
made the subject of a poem by him. M. Martin may also be gently
censured for citing without sufficient discrimination ancient
authors having very different degrees of authority and value.
2. It is an interesting and not unimportant question which is
touched upon by Martin, whether the Atlantis of Plato in any
degree held out a guiding light to the early navigators. He is
inclined to think that there is no real connexion between them.
But surely the discovery of the New World was preceded by a
prophetic anticipation of it, which, like the hope of a Messiah,
was entering into the hearts of men? And this hope was nursed by
ancient tradition, which had found expression from time to time
in the celebrated lines of Seneca and in many other places. This
tradition was sustained by the great authority of Plato, and
therefore the legend of the Island of Atlantis, though not
closely connected with the voyages of the early navigators, may
be truly said to have contributed indirectly to the great
discovery.
The Timaeus of Plato, like the Protagoras and several portions of
the Phaedrus and Republic, was translated by Cicero into Latin.
About a fourth, comprehending with lacunae the first portion of
the dialogue, is preserved in several MSS. These generally agree,
and therefore may be supposed to be derived from a single
original. The version is very faithful, and is a remarkable
monument of Cicero’s skill in managing the difficult and
intractable Greek. In his treatise De Natura Deorum, he also
refers to the Timaeus, which, speaking in the person of Velleius
the Epicurean, he severely criticises.
The commentary of Proclus on the Timaeus is a wonderful monument
of the silliness and prolixity of the Alexandrian Age. It extends
to about thirty pages of the book, and is thirty times the length
of the original. It is surprising that this voluminous work
should have found a translator (Thomas Taylor, a kindred spirit,
who was himself a Neo-Platonist, after the fashion, not of the
fifth or sixteenth, but of the nineteenth century A.D.). The
commentary is of little or no value, either in a philosophical or
philological point of view. The writer is unable to explain
particular passages in any precise manner, and he is equally
incapable of grasping the whole. He does not take words in their
simple meaning or sentences in their natural connexion. He is
thinking, not of the context in Plato, but of the contemporary
Pythagorean philosophers and their wordy strife. He finds nothing
in the text which he does not bring to it. He is full of
Porphyry, Iamblichus and Plotinus, of misapplied logic, of
misunderstood grammar, and of the Orphic theology.
Although such a work can contribute little or nothing to the
understanding of Plato, it throws an interesting light on the
Alexandrian times; it realizes how a philosophy made up of words
only may create a deep and widespread enthusiasm, how the forms
of logic and rhetoric may usurp the place of reason and truth,
how all philosophies grow faded and discoloured, and are patched
and made up again like worn-out garments, and retain only a
second-hand existence. He who would study this degeneracy of
philosophy and of the Greek mind in the original cannot do better
than devote a few of his days and nights to the commentary of
Proclus on the Timaeus.
A very different account must be given of the short work entitled
‘Timaeus Locrus,’ which is a brief but clear analysis of the
Timaeus of Plato, omitting the introduction or dialogue and
making a few small additions. It does not allude to the original
from which it is taken; it is quite free from mysticism and
Neo-Platonism. In length it does not exceed a fifth part of the
Timaeus. It is written in the Doric dialect, and contains several
words which do not occur in classical Greek. No other indication
of its date, except this uncertain one of language, appears in
it. In several places the writer has simplified the language of
Plato, in a few others he has embellished and exaggerated it. He
generally preserves the thought of the original, but does not
copy the words. On the whole this little tract faithfully
reflects the meaning and spirit of the Timaeus.
From the garden of the Timaeus, as from the other dialogues of
Plato, we may still gather a few flowers and present them at
parting to the reader. There is nothing in Plato grander and
simpler than the conversation between Solon and the Egyptian
priest, in which the youthfulness of Hellas is contrasted with
the antiquity of Egypt. Here are to be found the famous words, ‘O
Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are ever young, and there is not an
old man among you’—which may be compared to the lively saying of
Hegel, that ‘Greek history began with the youth Achilles and left
off with the youth Alexander.’ The numerous arts of
verisimilitude by which Plato insinuates into the mind of the
reader the truth of his narrative have been already referred to.
Here occur a sentence or two not wanting in Platonic irony
(Greek—a word to the wise). ‘To know or tell the origin of the
other divinities is beyond us, and we must accept the traditions
of the men of old time who affirm themselves to be the offspring
of the Gods—that is what they say—and they must surely have known
their own ancestors. How can we doubt the word of the children of
the Gods? Although they give no probable or certain proofs,
still, as they declare that they are speaking of what took place
in their own family, we must conform to custom and believe them.’
‘Our creators well knew that women and other animals would some
day be framed out of men, and they further knew that many animals
would require the use of nails for many purposes; wherefore they
fashioned in men at their first creation the rudiments of nails.’
Or once more, let us reflect on two serious passages in which the
order of the world is supposed to find a place in the human soul
and to infuse harmony into it. ‘The soul, when touching anything
that has essence, whether dispersed in parts or undivided, is
stirred through all her powers to declare the sameness or
difference of that thing and some other; and to what individuals
are related, and by what affected, and in what way and how and
when, both in the world of generation and in the world of
immutable being. And when reason, which works with equal truth,
whether she be in the circle of the diverse or of the same,—in
voiceless silence holding her onward course in the sphere of the
self-moved,—when reason, I say, is hovering around the sensible
world, and when the circle of the diverse also moving truly
imparts the intimations of sense to the whole soul, then arise
opinions and beliefs sure and certain. But when reason is
concerned with the rational, and the circle of the same moving
smoothly declares it, then intelligence and knowledge are
necessarily perfected;’ where, proceeding in a similar path of
contemplation, he supposes the inward and the outer world
mutually to imply each other. ‘God invented and gave us sight to
the end that we might behold the courses of intelligence in the
heaven, and apply them to the courses of our own intelligence
which are akin to them, the unperturbed to the perturbed; and
that we, learning them and partaking of the natural truth of
reason, might imitate the absolutely unerring courses of God and
regulate our own vagaries.’ Or let us weigh carefully some other
profound thoughts, such as the following. ‘He who neglects
education walks lame to the end of his life, and returns
imperfect and good for nothing to the world below.’ ‘The father
and maker of all this universe is past finding out; and even if
we found him, to tell of him to all men would be impossible.’
‘Let me tell you then why the Creator made this world of
generation. He was good, and the good can never have jealousy of
anything. And being free from jealousy, he desired that all
things should be as like himself as they could be. This is in the
truest sense the origin of creation and of the world, as we shall
do well in believing on the testimony of wise men: God desired
that all things should be good and nothing bad, so far as this
was attainable.’ This is the leading thought in the Timaeus, just
as the IDEA of Good is the leading thought of the Republic, the
one expression describing the personal, the other the impersonal
Good or God, differing in form rather than in substance, and both
equally implying to the mind of Plato a divine reality. The
slight touch, perhaps ironical, contained in the words, ‘as we
shall do well in believing on the testimony of wise men,’ is very
characteristic of Plato.
TIMAEUS.
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Critias, Timaeus, Hermocrates.
SOCRATES: One, two, three; but where, my dear Timaeus, is the
fourth of those who were yesterday my guests and are to be my
entertainers to-day?
TIMAEUS: He has been taken ill, Socrates; for he would not
willingly have been absent from this gathering.
SOCRATES: Then, if he is not coming, you and the two others must
supply his place.
TIMAEUS: Certainly, and we will do all that we can; having been
handsomely entertained by you yesterday, those of us who remain
should be only too glad to return your hospitality.
SOCRATES: Do you remember what were the points of which I
required you to speak?
TIMAEUS: We remember some of them, and you will be here to remind
us of anything which we have forgotten: or rather, if we are not
troubling you, will you briefly recapitulate the whole, and then
the particulars will be more firmly fixed in our memories?
SOCRATES: To be sure I will: the chief theme of my yesterday’s
discourse was the State—how constituted and of what citizens
composed it would seem likely to be most perfect.
TIMAEUS: Yes, Socrates; and what you said of it was very much to
our mind.
SOCRATES: Did we not begin by separating the husbandmen and the
artisans from the class of defenders of the State?
TIMAEUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And when we had given to each one that single
employment and particular art which was suited to his nature, we
spoke of those who were intended to be our warriors, and said
that they were to be guardians of the city against attacks from
within as well as from without, and to have no other employment;
they were to be merciful in judging their subjects, of whom they
were by nature friends, but fierce to their enemies, when they
came across them in battle.
TIMAEUS: Exactly.
SOCRATES: We said, if I am not mistaken, that the guardians
should be gifted with a temperament in a high degree both
passionate and philosophical; and that then they would be as they
ought to be, gentle to their friends and fierce with their
enemies.
TIMAEUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And what did we say of their education? Were they not
to be trained in gymnastic, and music, and all other sorts of
knowledge which were proper for them?
TIMAEUS: Very true.
SOCRATES: And being thus trained they were not to consider gold
or silver or anything else to be their own private property; they
were to be like hired troops, receiving pay for keeping guard
from those who were protected by them—the pay was to be no more
than would suffice for men of simple life; and they were to spend
in common, and to live together in the continual practice of
virtue, which was to be their sole pursuit.
TIMAEUS: That was also said.
SOCRATES: Neither did we forget the women; of whom we declared,
that their natures should be assimilated and brought into harmony
with those of the men, and that common pursuits should be
assigned to them both in time of war and in their ordinary life.
TIMAEUS: That, again, was as you say.
SOCRATES: And what about the procreation of children? Or rather
was not the proposal too singular to be forgotten? for all wives
and children were to be in common, to the intent that no one
should ever know his own child, but they were to imagine that
they were all one family; those who were within a suitable limit
of age were to be brothers and sisters, those who were of an
elder generation parents and grandparents, and those of a
younger, children and grandchildren.
TIMAEUS: Yes, and the proposal is easy to remember, as you say.
SOCRATES: And do you also remember how, with a view of securing
as far as we could the best breed, we said that the chief
magistrates, male and female, should contrive secretly, by the
use of certain lots, so to arrange the nuptial meeting, that the
bad of either sex and the good of either sex might pair with
their like; and there was to be no quarrelling on this account,
for they would imagine that the union was a mere accident, and
was to be attributed to the lot?
TIMAEUS: I remember.
SOCRATES: And you remember how we said that the children of the
good parents were to be educated, and the children of the bad
secretly dispersed among the inferior citizens; and while they
were all growing up the rulers were to be on the look-out, and to
bring up from below in their turn those who were worthy, and
those among themselves who were unworthy were to take the places
of those who came up?
TIMAEUS: True.
SOCRATES: Then have I now given you all the heads of our
yesterday’s discussion? Or is there anything more, my dear
Timaeus, which has been omitted?
TIMAEUS: Nothing, Socrates; it was just as you have said.
SOCRATES: I should like, before proceeding further, to tell you
how I feel about the State which we have described. I might
compare myself to a person who, on beholding beautiful animals
either created by the painter’s art, or, better still, alive but
at rest, is seized with a desire of seeing them in motion or
engaged in some struggle or conflict to which their forms appear
suited; this is my feeling about the State which we have been
describing. There are conflicts which all cities undergo, and I
should like to hear some one tell of our own city carrying on a
struggle against her neighbours, and how she went out to war in a
becoming manner, and when at war showed by the greatness of her
actions and the magnanimity of her words in dealing with other
cities a result worthy of her training and education. Now I,
Critias and Hermocrates, am conscious that I myself should never
be able to celebrate the city and her citizens in a befitting
manner, and I am not surprised at my own incapacity; to me the
wonder is rather that the poets present as well as past are no
better—not that I mean to depreciate them; but every one can see
that they are a tribe of imitators, and will imitate best and
most easily the life in which they have been brought up; while
that which is beyond the range of a man’s education he finds hard
to carry out in action, and still harder adequately to represent
in language. I am aware that the Sophists have plenty of brave
words and fair conceits, but I am afraid that being only
wanderers from one city to another, and having never had
habitations of their own, they may fail in their conception of
philosophers and statesmen, and may not know what they do and say
in time of war, when they are fighting or holding parley with
their enemies. And thus people of your class are the only ones
remaining who are fitted by nature and education to take part at
once both in politics and philosophy. Here is Timaeus, of Locris
in Italy, a city which has admirable laws, and who is himself in
wealth and rank the equal of any of his fellow-citizens; he has
held the most important and honourable offices in his own state,
and, as I believe, has scaled the heights of all philosophy; and
here is Critias, whom every Athenian knows to be no novice in the
matters of which we are speaking; and as to Hermocrates, I am
assured by many witnesses that his genius and education qualify
him to take part in any speculation of the kind. And therefore
yesterday when I saw that you wanted me to describe the formation
of the State, I readily assented, being very well aware, that, if
you only would, none were better qualified to carry the
discussion further, and that when you had engaged our city in a
suitable war, you of all men living could best exhibit her
playing a fitting part. When I had completed my task, I in return
imposed this other task upon you. You conferred together and
agreed to entertain me to-day, as I had entertained you, with a
feast of discourse. Here am I in festive array, and no man can be
more ready for the promised banquet.
HERMOCRATES: And we too, Socrates, as Timaeus says, will not be
wanting in enthusiasm; and there is no excuse for not complying
with your request. As soon as we arrived yesterday at the
guest-chamber of Critias, with whom we are staying, or rather on
our way thither, we talked the matter over, and he told us an
ancient tradition, which I wish, Critias, that you would repeat
to Socrates, so that he may help us to judge whether it will
satisfy his requirements or not.
CRITIAS: I will, if Timaeus, who is our other partner, approves.
TIMAEUS: I quite approve.
CRITIAS: Then listen, Socrates, to a tale which, though strange,
is certainly true, having been attested by Solon, who was the
wisest of the seven sages. He was a relative and a dear friend of
my great-grandfather, Dropides, as he himself says in many
passages of his poems; and he told the story to Critias, my
grandfather, who remembered and repeated it to us. There were of
old, he said, great and marvellous actions of the Athenian city,
which have passed into oblivion through lapse of time and the
destruction of mankind, and one in particular, greater than all
the rest. This we will now rehearse. It will be a fitting
monument of our gratitude to you, and a hymn of praise true and
worthy of the goddess, on this her day of festival.
SOCRATES: Very good. And what is this ancient famous action of
the Athenians, which Critias declared, on the authority of Solon,
to be not a mere legend, but an actual fact?
CRITIAS: I will tell an old-world story which I heard from an
aged man; for Critias, at the time of telling it, was, as he
said, nearly ninety years of age, and I was about ten. Now the
day was that day of the Apaturia which is called the Registration
of Youth, at which, according to custom, our parents gave prizes
for recitations, and the poems of several poets were recited by
us boys, and many of us sang the poems of Solon, which at that
time had not gone out of fashion. One of our tribe, either
because he thought so or to please Critias, said that in his
judgment Solon was not only the wisest of men, but also the
noblest of poets. The old man, as I very well remember,
brightened up at hearing this and said, smiling: Yes, Amynander,
if Solon had only, like other poets, made poetry the business of
his life, and had completed the tale which he brought with him
from Egypt, and had not been compelled, by reason of the factions
and troubles which he found stirring in his own country when he
came home, to attend to other matters, in my opinion he would
have been as famous as Homer or Hesiod, or any poet.
And what was the tale about, Critias? said Amynander.
About the greatest action which the Athenians ever did, and which
ought to have been the most famous, but, through the lapse of
time and the destruction of the actors, it has not come down to
us.
Tell us, said the other, the whole story, and how and from whom
Solon heard this veritable tradition.
He replied:—In the Egyptian Delta, at the head of which the river
Nile divides, there is a certain district which is called the
district of Sais, and the great city of the district is also
called Sais, and is the city from which King Amasis came. The
citizens have a deity for their foundress; she is called in the
Egyptian tongue Neith, and is asserted by them to be the same
whom the Hellenes call Athene; they are great lovers of the
Athenians, and say that they are in some way related to them. To
this city came Solon, and was received there with great honour;
he asked the priests who were most skilful in such matters, about
antiquity, and made the discovery that neither he nor any other
Hellene knew anything worth mentioning about the times of old. On
one occasion, wishing to draw them on to speak of antiquity, he
began to tell about the most ancient things in our part of the
world—about Phoroneus, who is called ‘the first man,’ and about
Niobe; and after the Deluge, of the survival of Deucalion and
Pyrrha; and he traced the genealogy of their descendants, and
reckoning up the dates, tried to compute how many years ago the
events of which he was speaking happened. Thereupon one of the
priests, who was of a very great age, said: O Solon, Solon, you
Hellenes are never anything but children, and there is not an old
man among you. Solon in return asked him what he meant. I mean to
say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old
opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any
science which is hoary with age. And I will tell you why. There
have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind
arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about
by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by
innumerable other causes. There is a story, which even you have
preserved, that once upon a time Paethon, the son of Helios,
having yoked the steeds in his father’s chariot, because he was
not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all
that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a
thunderbolt. Now this has the form of a myth, but really
signifies a declination of the bodies moving in the heavens
around the earth, and a great conflagration of things upon the
earth, which recurs after long intervals; at such times those who
live upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more
liable to destruction than those who dwell by rivers or on the
seashore. And from this calamity the Nile, who is our
never-failing saviour, delivers and preserves us. When, on the
other hand, the gods purge the earth with a deluge of water, the
survivors in your country are herdsmen and shepherds who dwell on
the mountains, but those who, like you, live in cities are
carried by the rivers into the sea. Whereas in this land, neither
then nor at any other time, does the water come down from above
on the fields, having always a tendency to come up from below;
for which reason the traditions preserved here are the most
ancient. The fact is, that wherever the extremity of winter frost
or of summer sun does not prevent, mankind exist, sometimes in
greater, sometimes in lesser numbers. And whatever happened
either in your country or in ours, or in any other region of
which we are informed—if there were any actions noble or great or
in any other way remarkable, they have all been written down by
us of old, and are preserved in our temples. Whereas just when
you and other nations are beginning to be provided with letters
and the other requisites of civilized life, after the usual
interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes
pouring down, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of
letters and education; and so you have to begin all over again
like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient
times, either among us or among yourselves. As for those
genealogies of yours which you just now recounted to us, Solon,
they are no better than the tales of children. In the first place
you remember a single deluge only, but there were many previous
ones; in the next place, you do not know that there formerly
dwelt in your land the fairest and noblest race of men which ever
lived, and that you and your whole city are descended from a
small seed or remnant of them which survived. And this was
unknown to you, because, for many generations, the survivors of
that destruction died, leaving no written word. For there was a
time, Solon, before the great deluge of all, when the city which
now is Athens was first in war and in every way the best governed
of all cities, is said to have performed the noblest deeds and to
have had the fairest constitution of any of which tradition
tells, under the face of heaven. Solon marvelled at his words,
and earnestly requested the priests to inform him exactly and in
order about these former citizens. You are welcome to hear about
them, Solon, said the priest, both for your own sake and for that
of your city, and above all, for the sake of the goddess who is
the common patron and parent and educator of both our cities. She
founded your city a thousand years before ours (Observe that
Plato gives the same date (9000 years ago) for the foundation of
Athens and for the repulse of the invasion from Atlantis
(Crit.).), receiving from the Earth and Hephaestus the seed of
your race, and afterwards she founded ours, of which the
constitution is recorded in our sacred registers to be 8000 years
old. As touching your citizens of 9000 years ago, I will briefly
inform you of their laws and of their most famous action; the
exact particulars of the whole we will hereafter go through at
our leisure in the sacred registers themselves. If you compare
these very laws with ours you will find that many of ours are the
counterpart of yours as they were in the olden time. In the first
place, there is the caste of priests, which is separated from all
the others; next, there are the artificers, who ply their several
crafts by themselves and do not intermix; and also there is the
class of shepherds and of hunters, as well as that of husbandmen;
and you will observe, too, that the warriors in Egypt are
distinct from all the other classes, and are commanded by the law
to devote themselves solely to military pursuits; moreover, the
weapons which they carry are shields and spears, a style of
equipment which the goddess taught of Asiatics first to us, as in
your part of the world first to you. Then as to wisdom, do you
observe how our law from the very first made a study of the whole
order of things, extending even to prophecy and medicine which
gives health, out of these divine elements deriving what was
needful for human life, and adding every sort of knowledge which
was akin to them. All this order and arrangement the goddess
first imparted to you when establishing your city; and she chose
the spot of earth in which you were born, because she saw that
the happy temperament of the seasons in that land would produce
the wisest of men. Wherefore the goddess, who was a lover both of
war and of wisdom, selected and first of all settled that spot
which was the most likely to produce men likest herself. And
there you dwelt, having such laws as these and still better ones,
and excelled all mankind in all virtue, as became the children
and disciples of the gods.
Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state in our
histories. But one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness and
valour. For these histories tell of a mighty power which
unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and
Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came forth
out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was
navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the
straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the
island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the
way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole
of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for
this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a
harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea,
and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless
continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and
wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several
others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the
men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the
columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as
Tyrrhenia. This vast power, gathered into one, endeavoured to
subdue at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the
region within the straits; and then, Solon, your country shone
forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all
mankind. She was pre-eminent in courage and military skill, and
was the leader of the Hellenes. And when the rest fell off from
her, being compelled to stand alone, after having undergone the
very extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphed over the
invaders, and preserved from slavery those who were not yet
subjugated, and generously liberated all the rest of us who dwell
within the pillars. But afterwards there occurred violent
earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of
misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth,
and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the
depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is
impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in
the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.
I have told you briefly, Socrates, what the aged Critias heard
from Solon and related to us. And when you were speaking
yesterday about your city and citizens, the tale which I have
just been repeating to you came into my mind, and I remarked with
astonishment how, by some mysterious coincidence, you agreed in
almost every particular with the narrative of Solon; but I did
not like to speak at the moment. For a long time had elapsed, and
I had forgotten too much; I thought that I must first of all run
over the narrative in my own mind, and then I would speak. And so
I readily assented to your request yesterday, considering that in
all such cases the chief difficulty is to find a tale suitable to
our purpose, and that with such a tale we should be fairly well
provided.
And therefore, as Hermocrates has told you, on my way home
yesterday I at once communicated the tale to my companions as I
remembered it; and after I left them, during the night by
thinking I recovered nearly the whole of it. Truly, as is often
said, the lessons of our childhood make a wonderful impression on
our memories; for I am not sure that I could remember all the
discourse of yesterday, but I should be much surprised if I
forgot any of these things which I have heard very long ago. I
listened at the time with childlike interest to the old man’s
narrative; he was very ready to teach me, and I asked him again
and again to repeat his words, so that like an indelible picture
they were branded into my mind. As soon as the day broke, I
rehearsed them as he spoke them to my companions, that they, as
well as myself, might have something to say. And now, Socrates,
to make an end of my preface, I am ready to tell you the whole
tale. I will give you not only the general heads, but the
particulars, as they were told to me. The city and citizens,
which you yesterday described to us in fiction, we will now
transfer to the world of reality. It shall be the ancient city of
Athens, and we will suppose that the citizens whom you imagined,
were our veritable ancestors, of whom the priest spoke; they will
perfectly harmonize, and there will be no inconsistency in saying
that the citizens of your republic are these ancient Athenians.
Let us divide the subject among us, and all endeavour according
to our ability gracefully to execute the task which you have
imposed upon us. Consider then, Socrates, if this narrative is
suited to the purpose, or whether we should seek for some other
instead.
SOCRATES: And what other, Critias, can we find that will be
better than this, which is natural and suitable to the festival
of the goddess, and has the very great advantage of being a fact
and not a fiction? How or where shall we find another if we
abandon this? We cannot, and therefore you must tell the tale,
and good luck to you; and I in return for my yesterday’s
discourse will now rest and be a listener.
CRITIAS: Let me proceed to explain to you, Socrates, the order in
which we have arranged our entertainment. Our intention is, that
Timaeus, who is the most of an astronomer amongst us, and has
made the nature of the universe his special study, should speak
first, beginning with the generation of the world and going down
to the creation of man; next, I am to receive the men whom he has
created, and of whom some will have profited by the excellent
education which you have given them; and then, in accordance with
the tale of Solon, and equally with his law, we will bring them
into court and make them citizens, as if they were those very
Athenians whom the sacred Egyptian record has recovered from
oblivion, and thenceforward we will speak of them as Athenians
and fellow-citizens.
SOCRATES: I see that I shall receive in my turn a perfect and
splendid feast of reason. And now, Timaeus, you, I suppose,
should speak next, after duly calling upon the Gods.
TIMAEUS: All men, Socrates, who have any degree of right feeling,
at the beginning of every enterprise, whether small or great,
always call upon God. And we, too, who are going to discourse of
the nature of the universe, how created or how existing without
creation, if we be not altogether out of our wits, must invoke
the aid of Gods and Goddesses and pray that our words may be
acceptable to them and consistent with themselves. Let this,
then, be our invocation of the Gods, to which I add an
exhortation of myself to speak in such manner as will be most
intelligible to you, and will most accord with my own intent.
First then, in my judgment, we must make a distinction and ask,
What is that which always is and has no becoming; and what is
that which is always becoming and never is? That which is
apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same
state; but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of
sensation and without reason, is always in a process of becoming
and perishing and never really is. Now everything that becomes or
is created must of necessity be created by some cause, for
without a cause nothing can be created. The work of the creator,
whenever he looks to the unchangeable and fashions the form and
nature of his work after an unchangeable pattern, must
necessarily be made fair and perfect; but when he looks to the
created only, and uses a created pattern, it is not fair or
perfect. Was the heaven then or the world, whether called by this
or by any other more appropriate name—assuming the name, I am
asking a question which has to be asked at the beginning of an
enquiry about anything—was the world, I say, always in existence
and without beginning? or created, and had it a beginning?
Created, I reply, being visible and tangible and having a body,
and therefore sensible; and all sensible things are apprehended
by opinion and sense and are in a process of creation and
created. Now that which is created must, as we affirm, of
necessity be created by a cause. But the father and maker of all
this universe is past finding out; and even if we found him, to
tell of him to all men would be impossible. And there is still a
question to be asked about him: Which of the patterns had the
artificer in view when he made the world—the pattern of the
unchangeable, or of that which is created? If the world be indeed
fair and the artificer good, it is manifest that he must have
looked to that which is eternal; but if what cannot be said
without blasphemy is true, then to the created pattern. Every one
will see that he must have looked to the eternal; for the world
is the fairest of creations and he is the best of causes. And
having been created in this way, the world has been framed in the
likeness of that which is apprehended by reason and mind and is
unchangeable, and must therefore of necessity, if this is
admitted, be a copy of something. Now it is all-important that
the beginning of everything should be according to nature. And in
speaking of the copy and the original we may assume that words
are akin to the matter which they describe; when they relate to
the lasting and permanent and intelligible, they ought to be
lasting and unalterable, and, as far as their nature allows,
irrefutable and immovable—nothing less. But when they express
only the copy or likeness and not the eternal things themselves,
they need only be likely and analogous to the real words. As
being is to becoming, so is truth to belief. If then, Socrates,
amid the many opinions about the gods and the generation of the
universe, we are not able to give notions which are altogether
and in every respect exact and consistent with one another, do
not be surprised. Enough, if we adduce probabilities as likely as
any others; for we must remember that I who am the speaker, and
you who are the judges, are only mortal men, and we ought to
accept the tale which is probable and enquire no further.
SOCRATES: Excellent, Timaeus; and we will do precisely as you bid
us. The prelude is charming, and is already accepted by us—may we
beg of you to proceed to the strain?
TIMAEUS: Let me tell you then why the creator made this world of
generation. He was good, and the good can never have any jealousy
of anything. And being free from jealousy, he desired that all
things should be as like himself as they could be. This is in the
truest sense the origin of creation and of the world, as we shall
do well in believing on the testimony of wise men: God desired
that all things should be good and nothing bad, so far as this
was attainable. Wherefore also finding the whole visible sphere
not at rest, but moving in an irregular and disorderly fashion,
out of disorder he brought order, considering that this was in
every way better than the other. Now the deeds of the best could
never be or have been other than the fairest; and the creator,
reflecting on the things which are by nature visible, found that
no unintelligent creature taken as a whole was fairer than the
intelligent taken as a whole; and that intelligence could not be
present in anything which was devoid of soul. For which reason,
when he was framing the universe, he put intelligence in soul,
and soul in body, that he might be the creator of a work which
was by nature fairest and best. Wherefore, using the language of
probability, we may say that the world became a living creature
truly endowed with soul and intelligence by the providence of
God.
This being supposed, let us proceed to the next stage: In the
likeness of what animal did the Creator make the world? It would
be an unworthy thing to liken it to any nature which exists as a
part only; for nothing can be beautiful which is like any
imperfect thing; but let us suppose the world to be the very
image of that whole of which all other animals both individually
and in their tribes are portions. For the original of the
universe contains in itself all intelligible beings, just as this
world comprehends us and all other visible creatures. For the
Deity, intending to make this world like the fairest and most
perfect of intelligible beings, framed one visible animal
comprehending within itself all other animals of a kindred
nature. Are we right in saying that there is one world, or that
they are many and infinite? There must be one only, if the
created copy is to accord with the original. For that which
includes all other intelligible creatures cannot have a second or
companion; in that case there would be need of another living
being which would include both, and of which they would be parts,
and the likeness would be more truly said to resemble not them,
but that other which included them. In order then that the world
might be solitary, like the perfect animal, the creator made not
two worlds or an infinite number of them; but there is and ever
will be one only-begotten and created heaven.
Now that which is created is of necessity corporeal, and also
visible and tangible. And nothing is visible where there is no
fire, or tangible which has no solidity, and nothing is solid
without earth. Wherefore also God in the beginning of creation
made the body of the universe to consist of fire and earth. But
two things cannot be rightly put together without a third; there
must be some bond of union between them. And the fairest bond is
that which makes the most complete fusion of itself and the
things which it combines; and proportion is best adapted to
effect such a union. For whenever in any three numbers, whether
cube or square, there is a mean, which is to the last term what
the first term is to it; and again, when the mean is to the first
term as the last term is to the mean—then the mean becoming first
and last, and the first and last both becoming means, they will
all of them of necessity come to be the same, and having become
the same with one another will be all one. If the universal frame
had been created a surface only and having no depth, a single
mean would have sufficed to bind together itself and the other
terms; but now, as the world must be solid, and solid bodies are
always compacted not by one mean but by two, God placed water and
air in the mean between fire and earth, and made them to have the
same proportion so far as was possible (as fire is to air so is
air to water, and as air is to water so is water to earth); and
thus he bound and put together a visible and tangible heaven. And
for these reasons, and out of such elements which are in number
four, the body of the world was created, and it was harmonized by
proportion, and therefore has the spirit of friendship; and
having been reconciled to itself, it was indissoluble by the hand
of any other than the framer.
Now the creation took up the whole of each of the four elements;
for the Creator compounded the world out of all the fire and all
the water and all the air and all the earth, leaving no part of
any of them nor any power of them outside. His intention was, in
the first place, that the animal should be as far as possible a
perfect whole and of perfect parts: secondly, that it should be
one, leaving no remnants out of which another such world might be
created: and also that it should be free from old age and
unaffected by disease. Considering that if heat and cold and
other powerful forces which unite bodies surround and attack them
from without when they are unprepared, they decompose them, and
by bringing diseases and old age upon them, make them waste
away—for this cause and on these grounds he made the world one
whole, having every part entire, and being therefore perfect and
not liable to old age and disease. And he gave to the world the
figure which was suitable and also natural. Now to the animal
which was to comprehend all animals, that figure was suitable
which comprehends within itself all other figures. Wherefore he
made the world in the form of a globe, round as from a lathe,
having its extremes in every direction equidistant from the
centre, the most perfect and the most like itself of all figures;
for he considered that the like is infinitely fairer than the
unlike. This he finished off, making the surface smooth all round
for many reasons; in the first place, because the living being
had no need of eyes when there was nothing remaining outside him
to be seen; nor of ears when there was nothing to be heard; and
there was no surrounding atmosphere to be breathed; nor would
there have been any use of organs by the help of which he might
receive his food or get rid of what he had already digested,
since there was nothing which went from him or came into him: for
there was nothing beside him. Of design he was created thus, his
own waste providing his own food, and all that he did or suffered
taking place in and by himself. For the Creator conceived that a
being which was self-sufficient would be far more excellent than
one which lacked anything; and, as he had no need to take
anything or defend himself against any one, the Creator did not
think it necessary to bestow upon him hands: nor had he any need
of feet, nor of the whole apparatus of walking; but the movement
suited to his spherical form was assigned to him, being of all
the seven that which is most appropriate to mind and
intelligence; and he was made to move in the same manner and on
the same spot, within his own limits revolving in a circle. All
the other six motions were taken away from him, and he was made
not to partake of their deviations. And as this circular movement
required no feet, the universe was created without legs and
without feet.
Such was the whole plan of the eternal God about the god that was
to be, to whom for this reason he gave a body, smooth and even,
having a surface in every direction equidistant from the centre,
a body entire and perfect, and formed out of perfect bodies. And
in the centre he put the soul, which he diffused throughout the
body, making it also to be the exterior environment of it; and he
made the universe a circle moving in a circle, one and solitary,
yet by reason of its excellence able to converse with itself, and
needing no other friendship or acquaintance. Having these
purposes in view he created the world a blessed god.
Now God did not make the soul after the body, although we are
speaking of them in this order; for having brought them together
he would never have allowed that the elder should be ruled by the
younger; but this is a random manner of speaking which we have,
because somehow we ourselves too are very much under the dominion
of chance. Whereas he made the soul in origin and excellence
prior to and older than the body, to be the ruler and mistress,
of whom the body was to be the subject. And he made her out of
the following elements and on this wise: Out of the indivisible
and unchangeable, and also out of that which is divisible and has
to do with material bodies, he compounded a third and
intermediate kind of essence, partaking of the nature of the same
and of the other, and this compound he placed accordingly in a
mean between the indivisible, and the divisible and material. He
took the three elements of the same, the other, and the essence,
and mingled them into one form, compressing by force the
reluctant and unsociable nature of the other into the same. When
he had mingled them with the essence and out of three made one,
he again divided this whole into as many portions as was fitting,
each portion being a compound of the same, the other, and the
essence. And he proceeded to divide after this manner:—First of
all, he took away one part of the whole (1), and then he
separated a second part which was double the first (2), and then
he took away a third part which was half as much again as the
second and three times as much as the first (3), and then he took
a fourth part which was twice as much as the second (4), and a
fifth part which was three times the third (9), and a sixth part
which was eight times the first (8), and a seventh part which was
twenty-seven times the first (27). After this he filled up the
double intervals (i.e. between 1, 2, 4, 8) and the triple (i.e.
between 1, 3, 9, 27) cutting off yet other portions from the
mixture and placing them in the intervals, so that in each
interval there were two kinds of means, the one exceeding and
exceeded by equal parts of its extremes (as for example 1, 4/3,
2, in which the mean 4/3 is one-third of 1 more than 1, and
one-third of 2 less than 2), the other being that kind of mean
which exceeds and is exceeded by an equal number (e.g.
- over 1, 4/3, 3/2, - over 2, 8/3, 3, - over 4, 16/3, 6, - over 8: and
- over 1, 3/2, 2, - over 3, 9/2, 6, - over 9, 27/2, 18, - over 27.
Where there were intervals of 3/2 and of 4/3 and of 9/8, made by
the connecting terms in the former intervals, he filled up all
the intervals of 4/3 with the interval of 9/8, leaving a fraction
over; and the interval which this fraction expressed was in the
ratio of 256 to 243 (e.g.
243:256::81/64:4/3::243/128:2::81/32:8/3::243/64:4::81/16:16/3::242/32:8.
And thus the whole mixture out of which he cut these portions was
all exhausted by him. This entire compound he divided lengthways
into two parts, which he joined to one another at the centre like
the letter X, and bent them into a circular form, connecting them
with themselves and each other at the point opposite to their
original meeting-point; and, comprehending them in a uniform
revolution upon the same axis, he made the one the outer and the
other the inner circle. Now the motion of the outer circle he
called the motion of the same, and the motion of the inner circle
the motion of the other or diverse. The motion of the same he
carried round by the side (i.e. of the rectangular figure
supposed to be inscribed in the circle of the Same) to the right,
and the motion of the diverse diagonally (i.e. across the
rectangular figure from corner to corner) to the left. And he
gave dominion to the motion of the same and like, for that he
left single and undivided; but the inner motion he divided in six
places and made seven unequal circles having their intervals in
ratios of two and three, three of each, and bade the orbits
proceed in a direction opposite to one another; and three (Sun,
Mercury, Venus) he made to move with equal swiftness, and the
remaining four (Moon, Saturn, Mars, Jupiter) to move with unequal
swiftness to the three and to one another, but in due proportion.
Now when the Creator had framed the soul according to his will,
he formed within her the corporeal universe, and brought the two
together, and united them centre to centre. The soul, interfused
everywhere from the centre to the circumference of heaven, of
which also she is the external envelopment, herself turning in
herself, began a divine beginning of never-ceasing and rational
life enduring throughout all time. The body of heaven is visible,
but the soul is invisible, and partakes of reason and harmony,
and being made by the best of intellectual and everlasting
natures, is the best of things created. And because she is
composed of the same and of the other and of the essence, these
three, and is divided and united in due proportion, and in her
revolutions returns upon herself, the soul, when touching
anything which has essence, whether dispersed in parts or
undivided, is stirred through all her powers, to declare the
sameness or difference of that thing and some other; and to what
individuals are related, and by what affected, and in what way
and how and when, both in the world of generation and in the
world of immutable being. And when reason, which works with equal
truth, whether she be in the circle of the diverse or of the
same—in voiceless silence holding her onward course in the sphere
of the self-moved—when reason, I say, is hovering around the
sensible world and when the circle of the diverse also moving
truly imparts the intimations of sense to the whole soul, then
arise opinions and beliefs sure and certain. But when reason is
concerned with the rational, and the circle of the same moving
smoothly declares it, then intelligence and knowledge are
necessarily perfected. And if any one affirms that in which these
two are found to be other than the soul, he will say the very
opposite of the truth.
When the father and creator saw the creature which he had made
moving and living, the created image of the eternal gods, he
rejoiced, and in his joy determined to make the copy still more
like the original; and as this was eternal, he sought to make the
universe eternal, so far as might be. Now the nature of the ideal
being was everlasting, but to bestow this attribute in its
fulness upon a creature was impossible. Wherefore he resolved to
have a moving image of eternity, and when he set in order the
heaven, he made this image eternal but moving according to
number, while eternity itself rests in unity; and this image we
call time. For there were no days and nights and months and years
before the heaven was created, but when he constructed the heaven
he created them also. They are all parts of time, and the past
and future are created species of time, which we unconsciously
but wrongly transfer to the eternal essence; for we say that he
‘was,’ he ‘is,’ he ‘will be,’ but the truth is that ‘is’ alone is
properly attributed to him, and that ‘was’ and ‘will be’ are only
to be spoken of becoming in time, for they are motions, but that
which is immovably the same cannot become older or younger by
time, nor ever did or has become, or hereafter will be, older or
younger, nor is subject at all to any of those states which
affect moving and sensible things and of which generation is the
cause. These are the forms of time, which imitates eternity and
revolves according to a law of number. Moreover, when we say that
what has become IS become and what becomes IS becoming, and that
what will become IS about to become and that the non-existent IS
non-existent—all these are inaccurate modes of expression
(compare Parmen.). But perhaps this whole subject will be more
suitably discussed on some other occasion.
Time, then, and the heaven came into being at the same instant in
order that, having been created together, if ever there was to be
a dissolution of them, they might be dissolved together. It was
framed after the pattern of the eternal nature, that it might
resemble this as far as was possible; for the pattern exists from
eternity, and the created heaven has been, and is, and will be,
in all time. Such was the mind and thought of God in the creation
of time. The sun and moon and five other stars, which are called
the planets, were created by him in order to distinguish and
preserve the numbers of time; and when he had made their several
bodies, he placed them in the orbits in which the circle of the
other was revolving,—in seven orbits seven stars. First, there
was the moon in the orbit nearest the earth, and next the sun, in
the second orbit above the earth; then came the morning star and
the star sacred to Hermes, moving in orbits which have an equal
swiftness with the sun, but in an opposite direction; and this is
the reason why the sun and Hermes and Lucifer overtake and are
overtaken by each other. To enumerate the places which he
assigned to the other stars, and to give all the reasons why he
assigned them, although a secondary matter, would give more
trouble than the primary. These things at some future time, when
we are at leisure, may have the consideration which they deserve,
but not at present.
Now, when all the stars which were necessary to the creation of
time had attained a motion suitable to them, and had become
living creatures having bodies fastened by vital chains, and
learnt their appointed task, moving in the motion of the diverse,
which is diagonal, and passes through and is governed by the
motion of the same, they revolved, some in a larger and some in a
lesser orbit—those which had the lesser orbit revolving faster,
and those which had the larger more slowly. Now by reason of the
motion of the same, those which revolved fastest appeared to be
overtaken by those which moved slower although they really
overtook them; for the motion of the same made them all turn in a
spiral, and, because some went one way and some another, that
which receded most slowly from the sphere of the same, which was
the swiftest, appeared to follow it most nearly. That there might
be some visible measure of their relative swiftness and slowness
as they proceeded in their eight courses, God lighted a fire,
which we now call the sun, in the second from the earth of these
orbits, that it might give light to the whole of heaven, and that
the animals, as many as nature intended, might participate in
number, learning arithmetic from the revolution of the same and
the like. Thus then, and for this reason the night and the day
were created, being the period of the one most intelligent
revolution. And the month is accomplished when the moon has
completed her orbit and overtaken the sun, and the year when the
sun has completed his own orbit. Mankind, with hardly an
exception, have not remarked the periods of the other stars, and
they have no name for them, and do not measure them against one
another by the help of number, and hence they can scarcely be
said to know that their wanderings, being infinite in number and
admirable for their variety, make up time. And yet there is no
difficulty in seeing that the perfect number of time fulfils the
perfect year when all the eight revolutions, having their
relative degrees of swiftness, are accomplished together and
attain their completion at the same time, measured by the
rotation of the same and equally moving. After this manner, and
for these reasons, came into being such of the stars as in their
heavenly progress received reversals of motion, to the end that
the created heaven might imitate the eternal nature, and be as
like as possible to the perfect and intelligible animal.
Thus far and until the birth of time the created universe was
made in the likeness of the original, but inasmuch as all animals
were not yet comprehended therein, it was still unlike. What
remained, the creator then proceeded to fashion after the nature
of the pattern. Now as in the ideal animal the mind perceives
ideas or species of a certain nature and number, he thought that
this created animal ought to have species of a like nature and
number. There are four such; one of them is the heavenly race of
the gods; another, the race of birds whose way is in the air; the
third, the watery species; and the fourth, the pedestrian and
land creatures. Of the heavenly and divine, he created the
greater part out of fire, that they might be the brightest of all
things and fairest to behold, and he fashioned them after the
likeness of the universe in the figure of a circle, and made them
follow the intelligent motion of the supreme, distributing them
over the whole circumference of heaven, which was to be a true
cosmos or glorious world spangled with them all over. And he gave
to each of them two movements: the first, a movement on the same
spot after the same manner, whereby they ever continue to think
consistently the same thoughts about the same things; the second,
a forward movement, in which they are controlled by the
revolution of the same and the like; but by the other five
motions they were unaffected, in order that each of them might
attain the highest perfection. And for this reason the fixed
stars were created, to be divine and eternal animals,
ever-abiding and revolving after the same manner and on the same
spot; and the other stars which reverse their motion and are
subject to deviations of this kind, were created in the manner
already described. The earth, which is our nurse, clinging (or
‘circling’) around the pole which is extended through the
universe, he framed to be the guardian and artificer of night and
day, first and eldest of gods that are in the interior of heaven.
Vain would be the attempt to tell all the figures of them
circling as in dance, and their juxtapositions, and the return of
them in their revolutions upon themselves, and their
approximations, and to say which of these deities in their
conjunctions meet, and which of them are in opposition, and in
what order they get behind and before one another, and when they
are severally eclipsed to our sight and again reappear, sending
terrors and intimations of the future to those who cannot
calculate their movements—to attempt to tell of all this without
a visible representation of the heavenly system would be labour
in vain. Enough on this head; and now let what we have said about
the nature of the created and visible gods have an end.
To know or tell the origin of the other divinities is beyond us,
and we must accept the traditions of the men of old time who
affirm themselves to be the offspring of the gods—that is what
they say—and they must surely have known their own ancestors. How
can we doubt the word of the children of the gods? Although they
give no probable or certain proofs, still, as they declare that
they are speaking of what took place in their own family, we must
conform to custom and believe them. In this manner, then,
according to them, the genealogy of these gods is to be received
and set forth.
Oceanus and Tethys were the children of Earth and Heaven, and
from these sprang Phorcys and Cronos and Rhea, and all that
generation; and from Cronos and Rhea sprang Zeus and Here, and
all those who are said to be their brethren, and others who were
the children of these.
Now, when all of them, both those who visibly appear in their
revolutions as well as those other gods who are of a more
retiring nature, had come into being, the creator of the universe
addressed them in these words: ‘Gods, children of gods, who are
my works, and of whom I am the artificer and father, my creations
are indissoluble, if so I will. All that is bound may be undone,
but only an evil being would wish to undo that which is
harmonious and happy. Wherefore, since ye are but creatures, ye
are not altogether immortal and indissoluble, but ye shall
certainly not be dissolved, nor be liable to the fate of death,
having in my will a greater and mightier bond than those with
which ye were bound at the time of your birth. And now listen to
my instructions:—Three tribes of mortal beings remain to be
created—without them the universe will be incomplete, for it will
not contain every kind of animal which it ought to contain, if it
is to be perfect. On the other hand, if they were created by me
and received life at my hands, they would be on an equality with
the gods. In order then that they may be mortal, and that this
universe may be truly universal, do ye, according to your
natures, betake yourselves to the formation of animals, imitating
the power which was shown by me in creating you. The part of them
worthy of the name immortal, which is called divine and is the
guiding principle of those who are willing to follow justice and
you—of that divine part I will myself sow the seed, and having
made a beginning, I will hand the work over to you. And do ye
then interweave the mortal with the immortal, and make and beget
living creatures, and give them food, and make them to grow, and
receive them again in death.’
Thus he spake, and once more into the cup in which he had
previously mingled the soul of the universe he poured the remains
of the elements, and mingled them in much the same manner; they
were not, however, pure as before, but diluted to the second and
third degree. And having made it he divided the whole mixture
into souls equal in number to the stars, and assigned each soul
to a star; and having there placed them as in a chariot, he
showed them the nature of the universe, and declared to them the
laws of destiny, according to which their first birth would be
one and the same for all,—no one should suffer a disadvantage at
his hands; they were to be sown in the instruments of time
severally adapted to them, and to come forth the most religious
of animals; and as human nature was of two kinds, the superior
race would hereafter be called man. Now, when they should be
implanted in bodies by necessity, and be always gaining or losing
some part of their bodily substance, then in the first place it
would be necessary that they should all have in them one and the
same faculty of sensation, arising out of irresistible
impressions; in the second place, they must have love, in which
pleasure and pain mingle; also fear and anger, and the feelings
which are akin or opposite to them; if they conquered these they
would live righteously, and if they were conquered by them,
unrighteously. He who lived well during his appointed time was to
return and dwell in his native star, and there he would have a
blessed and congenial existence. But if he failed in attaining
this, at the second birth he would pass into a woman, and if,
when in that state of being, he did not desist from evil, he
would continually be changed into some brute who resembled him in
the evil nature which he had acquired, and would not cease from
his toils and transformations until he followed the revolution of
the same and the like within him, and overcame by the help of
reason the turbulent and irrational mob of later accretions, made
up of fire and air and water and earth, and returned to the form
of his first and better state. Having given all these laws to his
creatures, that he might be guiltless of future evil in any of
them, the creator sowed some of them in the earth, and some in
the moon, and some in the other instruments of time; and when he
had sown them he committed to the younger gods the fashioning of
their mortal bodies, and desired them to furnish what was still
lacking to the human soul, and having made all the suitable
additions, to rule over them, and to pilot the mortal animal in
the best and wisest manner which they could, and avert from him
all but self-inflicted evils.
When the creator had made all these ordinances he remained in his
own accustomed nature, and his children heard and were obedient
to their father’s word, and receiving from him the immortal
principle of a mortal creature, in imitation of their own creator
they borrowed portions of fire, and earth, and water, and air
from the world, which were hereafter to be restored—these they
took and welded them together, not with the indissoluble chains
by which they were themselves bound, but with little pegs too
small to be visible, making up out of all the four elements each
separate body, and fastening the courses of the immortal soul in
a body which was in a state of perpetual influx and efflux. Now
these courses, detained as in a vast river, neither overcame nor
were overcome; but were hurrying and hurried to and fro, so that
the whole animal was moved and progressed, irregularly however
and irrationally and anyhow, in all the six directions of motion,
wandering backwards and forwards, and right and left, and up and
down, and in all the six directions. For great as was the
advancing and retiring flood which provided nourishment, the
affections produced by external contact caused still greater
tumult—when the body of any one met and came into collision with
some external fire, or with the solid earth or the gliding
waters, or was caught in the tempest borne on the air, and the
motions produced by any of these impulses were carried through
the body to the soul. All such motions have consequently received
the general name of ‘sensations,’ which they still retain. And
they did in fact at that time create a very great and mighty
movement; uniting with the ever-flowing stream in stirring up and
violently shaking the courses of the soul, they completely
stopped the revolution of the same by their opposing current, and
hindered it from predominating and advancing; and they so
disturbed the nature of the other or diverse, that the three
double intervals (i.e. between 1, 2, 4, 8), and the three triple
intervals (i.e. between 1, 3, 9, 27), together with the mean
terms and connecting links which are expressed by the ratios of
3:2, and 4:3, and of 9:8—these, although they cannot be wholly
undone except by him who united them, were twisted by them in all
sorts of ways, and the circles were broken and disordered in
every possible manner, so that when they moved they were tumbling
to pieces, and moved irrationally, at one time in a reverse
direction, and then again obliquely, and then upside down, as you
might imagine a person who is upside down and has his head
leaning upon the ground and his feet up against something in the
air; and when he is in such a position, both he and the spectator
fancy that the right of either is his left, and the left right.
If, when powerfully experiencing these and similar effects, the
revolutions of the soul come in contact with some external thing,
either of the class of the same or of the other, they speak of
the same or of the other in a manner the very opposite of the
truth; and they become false and foolish, and there is no course
or revolution in them which has a guiding or directing power; and
if again any sensations enter in violently from without and drag
after them the whole vessel of the soul, then the courses of the
soul, though they seem to conquer, are really conquered.
And by reason of all these affections, the soul, when encased in
a mortal body, now, as in the beginning, is at first without
intelligence; but when the flood of growth and nutriment abates,
and the courses of the soul, calming down, go their own way and
become steadier as time goes on, then the several circles return
to their natural form, and their revolutions are corrected, and
they call the same and the other by their right names, and make
the possessor of them to become a rational being. And if these
combine in him with any true nurture or education, he attains the
fulness and health of the perfect man, and escapes the worst
disease of all; but if he neglects education he walks lame to the
end of his life, and returns imperfect and good for nothing to
the world below. This, however, is a later stage; at present we
must treat more exactly the subject before us, which involves a
preliminary enquiry into the generation of the body and its
members, and as to how the soul was created—for what reason and
by what providence of the gods; and holding fast to probability,
we must pursue our way.
First, then, the gods, imitating the spherical shape of the
universe, enclosed the two divine courses in a spherical body,
that, namely, which we now term the head, being the most divine
part of us and the lord of all that is in us: to this the gods,
when they put together the body, gave all the other members to be
servants, considering that it partook of every sort of motion. In
order then that it might not tumble about among the high and deep
places of the earth, but might be able to get over the one and
out of the other, they provided the body to be its vehicle and
means of locomotion; which consequently had length and was
furnished with four limbs extended and flexible; these God
contrived to be instruments of locomotion with which it might
take hold and find support, and so be able to pass through all
places, carrying on high the dwelling-place of the most sacred
and divine part of us. Such was the origin of legs and hands,
which for this reason were attached to every man; and the gods,
deeming the front part of man to be more honourable and more fit
to command than the hinder part, made us to move mostly in a
forward direction. Wherefore man must needs have his front part
unlike and distinguished from the rest of his body.
And so in the vessel of the head, they first of all put a face in
which they inserted organs to minister in all things to the
providence of the soul, and they appointed this part, which has
authority, to be by nature the part which is in front. And of the
organs they first contrived the eyes to give light, and the
principle according to which they were inserted was as follows:
So much of fire as would not burn, but gave a gentle light, they
formed into a substance akin to the light of every-day life; and
the pure fire which is within us and related thereto they made to
flow through the eyes in a stream smooth and dense, compressing
the whole eye, and especially the centre part, so that it kept
out everything of a coarser nature, and allowed to pass only this
pure element. When the light of day surrounds the stream of
vision, then like falls upon like, and they coalesce, and one
body is formed by natural affinity in the line of vision,
wherever the light that falls from within meets with an external
object. And the whole stream of vision, being similarly affected
in virtue of similarity, diffuses the motions of what it touches
or what touches it over the whole body, until they reach the
soul, causing that perception which we call sight. But when night
comes on and the external and kindred fire departs, then the
stream of vision is cut off; for going forth to an unlike element
it is changed and extinguished, being no longer of one nature
with the surrounding atmosphere which is now deprived of fire:
and so the eye no longer sees, and we feel disposed to sleep. For
when the eyelids, which the gods invented for the preservation of
sight, are closed, they keep in the internal fire; and the power
of the fire diffuses and equalizes the inward motions; when they
are equalized, there is rest, and when the rest is profound,
sleep comes over us scarce disturbed by dreams; but where the
greater motions still remain, of whatever nature and in whatever
locality, they engender corresponding visions in dreams, which
are remembered by us when we are awake and in the external world.
And now there is no longer any difficulty in understanding the
creation of images in mirrors and all smooth and bright surfaces.
For from the communion of the internal and external fires, and
again from the union of them and their numerous transformations
when they meet in the mirror, all these appearances of necessity
arise, when the fire from the face coalesces with the fire from
the eye on the bright and smooth surface. And right appears left
and left right, because the visual rays come into contact with
the rays emitted by the object in a manner contrary to the usual
mode of meeting; but the right appears right, and the left left,
when the position of one of the two concurring lights is
reversed; and this happens when the mirror is concave and its
smooth surface repels the right stream of vision to the left
side, and the left to the right (He is speaking of two kinds of
mirrors, first the plane, secondly the concave; and the latter is
supposed to be placed, first horizontally, and then vertically.).
Or if the mirror be turned vertically, then the concavity makes
the countenance appear to be all upside down, and the lower rays
are driven upwards and the upper downwards.
All these are to be reckoned among the second and co-operative
causes which God, carrying into execution the idea of the best as
far as possible, uses as his ministers. They are thought by most
men not to be the second, but the prime causes of all things,
because they freeze and heat, and contract and dilate, and the
like. But they are not so, for they are incapable of reason or
intellect; the only being which can properly have mind is the
invisible soul, whereas fire and water, and earth and air, are
all of them visible bodies. The lover of intellect and knowledge
ought to explore causes of intelligent nature first of all, and,
secondly, of those things which, being moved by others, are
compelled to move others. And this is what we too must do. Both
kinds of causes should be acknowledged by us, but a distinction
should be made between those which are endowed with mind and are
the workers of things fair and good, and those which are deprived
of intelligence and always produce chance effects without order
or design. Of the second or co-operative causes of sight, which
help to give to the eyes the power which they now possess, enough
has been said. I will therefore now proceed to speak of the
higher use and purpose for which God has given them to us. The
sight in my opinion is the source of the greatest benefit to us,
for had we never seen the stars, and the sun, and the heaven,
none of the words which we have spoken about the universe would
ever have been uttered. But now the sight of day and night, and
the months and the revolutions of the years, have created number,
and have given us a conception of time, and the power of
enquiring about the nature of the universe; and from this source
we have derived philosophy, than which no greater good ever was
or will be given by the gods to mortal man. This is the greatest
boon of sight: and of the lesser benefits why should I speak?
even the ordinary man if he were deprived of them would bewail
his loss, but in vain. Thus much let me say however: God invented
and gave us sight to the end that we might behold the courses of
intelligence in the heaven, and apply them to the courses of our
own intelligence which are akin to them, the unperturbed to the
perturbed; and that we, learning them and partaking of the
natural truth of reason, might imitate the absolutely unerring
courses of God and regulate our own vagaries. The same may be
affirmed of speech and hearing: they have been given by the gods
to the same end and for a like reason. For this is the principal
end of speech, whereto it most contributes. Moreover, so much of
music as is adapted to the sound of the voice and to the sense of
hearing is granted to us for the sake of harmony; and harmony,
which has motions akin to the revolutions of our souls, is not
regarded by the intelligent votary of the Muses as given by them
with a view to irrational pleasure, which is deemed to be the
purpose of it in our day, but as meant to correct any discord
which may have arisen in the courses of the soul, and to be our
ally in bringing her into harmony and agreement with herself; and
rhythm too was given by them for the same reason, on account of
the irregular and graceless ways which prevail among mankind
generally, and to help us against them.
Thus far in what we have been saying, with small exception, the
works of intelligence have been set forth; and now we must place
by the side of them in our discourse the things which come into
being through necessity—for the creation is mixed, being made up
of necessity and mind. Mind, the ruling power, persuaded
necessity to bring the greater part of created things to
perfection, and thus and after this manner in the beginning, when
the influence of reason got the better of necessity, the universe
was created. But if a person will truly tell of the way in which
the work was accomplished, he must include the other influence of
the variable cause as well. Wherefore, we must return again and
find another suitable beginning, as about the former matters, so
also about these. To which end we must consider the nature of
fire, and water, and air, and earth, such as they were prior to
the creation of the heaven, and what was happening to them in
this previous state; for no one has as yet explained the manner
of their generation, but we speak of fire and the rest of them,
whatever they mean, as though men knew their natures, and we
maintain them to be the first principles and letters or elements
of the whole, when they cannot reasonably be compared by a man of
any sense even to syllables or first compounds. And let me say
thus much: I will not now speak of the first principle or
principles of all things, or by whatever name they are to be
called, for this reason—because it is difficult to set forth my
opinion according to the method of discussion which we are at
present employing. Do not imagine, any more than I can bring
myself to imagine, that I should be right in undertaking so great
and difficult a task. Remembering what I said at first about
probability, I will do my best to give as probable an explanation
as any other—or rather, more probable; and I will first go back
to the beginning and try to speak of each thing and of all. Once
more, then, at the commencement of my discourse, I call upon God,
and beg him to be our saviour out of a strange and unwonted
enquiry, and to bring us to the haven of probability. So now let
us begin again.
This new beginning of our discussion of the universe requires a
fuller division than the former; for then we made two classes,
now a third must be revealed. The two sufficed for the former
discussion: one, which we assumed, was a pattern intelligible and
always the same; and the second was only the imitation of the
pattern, generated and visible. There is also a third kind which
we did not distinguish at the time, conceiving that the two would
be enough. But now the argument seems to require that we should
set forth in words another kind, which is difficult of
explanation and dimly seen. What nature are we to attribute to
this new kind of being? We reply, that it is the receptacle, and
in a manner the nurse, of all generation. I have spoken the
truth; but I must express myself in clearer language, and this
will be an arduous task for many reasons, and in particular
because I must first raise questions concerning fire and the
other elements, and determine what each of them is; for to say,
with any probability or certitude, which of them should be called
water rather than fire, and which should be called any of them
rather than all or some one of them, is a difficult matter. How,
then, shall we settle this point, and what questions about the
elements may be fairly raised?
In the first place, we see that what we just now called water, by
condensation, I suppose, becomes stone and earth; and this same
element, when melted and dispersed, passes into vapour and air.
Air, again, when inflamed, becomes fire; and again fire, when
condensed and extinguished, passes once more into the form of
air; and once more, air, when collected and condensed, produces
cloud and mist; and from these, when still more compressed, comes
flowing water, and from water comes earth and stones once more;
and thus generation appears to be transmitted from one to the
other in a circle. Thus, then, as the several elements never
present themselves in the same form, how can any one have the
assurance to assert positively that any of them, whatever it may
be, is one thing rather than another? No one can. But much the
safest plan is to speak of them as follows:—Anything which we see
to be continually changing, as, for example, fire, we must not
call ‘this’ or ‘that,’ but rather say that it is ‘of such a
nature’; nor let us speak of water as ‘this’; but always as
‘such’; nor must we imply that there is any stability in any of
those things which we indicate by the use of the words ‘this’ and
‘that,’ supposing ourselves to signify something thereby; for
they are too volatile to be detained in any such expressions as
‘this,’ or ‘that,’ or ‘relative to this,’ or any other mode of
speaking which represents them as permanent. We ought not to
apply ‘this’ to any of them, but rather the word ‘such’; which
expresses the similar principle circulating in each and all of
them; for example, that should be called ‘fire’ which is of such
a nature always, and so of everything that has generation. That
in which the elements severally grow up, and appear, and decay,
is alone to be called by the name ‘this’ or ‘that’; but that
which is of a certain nature, hot or white, or anything which
admits of opposite qualities, and all things that are compounded
of them, ought not to be so denominated. Let me make another
attempt to explain my meaning more clearly. Suppose a person to
make all kinds of figures of gold and to be always transmuting
one form into all the rest;—somebody points to one of them and
asks what it is. By far the safest and truest answer is, That is
gold; and not to call the triangle or any other figures which are
formed in the gold ‘these,’ as though they had existence, since
they are in process of change while he is making the assertion;
but if the questioner be willing to take the safe and indefinite
expression, ‘such,’ we should be satisfied. And the same argument
applies to the universal nature which receives all bodies—that
must be always called the same; for, while receiving all things,
she never departs at all from her own nature, and never in any
way, or at any time, assumes a form like that of any of the
things which enter into her; she is the natural recipient of all
impressions, and is stirred and informed by them, and appears
different from time to time by reason of them. But the forms
which enter into and go out of her are the likenesses of real
existences modelled after their patterns in a wonderful and
inexplicable manner, which we will hereafter investigate. For the
present we have only to conceive of three natures: first, that
which is in process of generation; secondly, that in which the
generation takes place; and thirdly, that of which the thing
generated is a resemblance. And we may liken the receiving
principle to a mother, and the source or spring to a father, and
the intermediate nature to a child; and may remark further, that
if the model is to take every variety of form, then the matter in
which the model is fashioned will not be duly prepared, unless it
is formless, and free from the impress of any of those shapes
which it is hereafter to receive from without. For if the matter
were like any of the supervening forms, then whenever any
opposite or entirely different nature was stamped upon its
surface, it would take the impression badly, because it would
intrude its own shape. Wherefore, that which is to receive all
forms should have no form; as in making perfumes they first
contrive that the liquid substance which is to receive the scent
shall be as inodorous as possible; or as those who wish to
impress figures on soft substances do not allow any previous
impression to remain, but begin by making the surface as even and
smooth as possible. In the same way that which is to receive
perpetually and through its whole extent the resemblances of all
eternal beings ought to be devoid of any particular form.
Wherefore, the mother and receptacle of all created and visible
and in any way sensible things, is not to be termed earth, or
air, or fire, or water, or any of their compounds or any of the
elements from which these are derived, but is an invisible and
formless being which receives all things and in some mysterious
way partakes of the intelligible, and is most incomprehensible.
In saying this we shall not be far wrong; as far, however, as we
can attain to a knowledge of her from the previous
considerations, we may truly say that fire is that part of her
nature which from time to time is inflamed, and water that which
is moistened, and that the mother substance becomes earth and
air, in so far as she receives the impressions of them.
Let us consider this question more precisely. Is there any
self-existent fire? and do all those things which we call
self-existent exist? or are only those things which we see, or in
some way perceive through the bodily organs, truly existent, and
nothing whatever besides them? And is all that which we call an
intelligible essence nothing at all, and only a name? Here is a
question which we must not leave unexamined or undetermined, nor
must we affirm too confidently that there can be no decision;
neither must we interpolate in our present long discourse a
digression equally long, but if it is possible to set forth a
great principle in a few words, that is just what we want.
Thus I state my view:—If mind and true opinion are two distinct
classes, then I say that there certainly are these self-existent
ideas unperceived by sense, and apprehended only by the mind; if,
however, as some say, true opinion differs in no respect from
mind, then everything that we perceive through the body is to be
regarded as most real and certain. But we must affirm them to be
distinct, for they have a distinct origin and are of a different
nature; the one is implanted in us by instruction, the other by
persuasion; the one is always accompanied by true reason, the
other is without reason; the one cannot be overcome by
persuasion, but the other can: and lastly, every man may be said
to share in true opinion, but mind is the attribute of the gods
and of very few men. Wherefore also we must acknowledge that
there is one kind of being which is always the same, uncreated
and indestructible, never receiving anything into itself from
without, nor itself going out to any other, but invisible and
imperceptible by any sense, and of which the contemplation is
granted to intelligence only. And there is another nature of the
same name with it, and like to it, perceived by sense, created,
always in motion, becoming in place and again vanishing out of
place, which is apprehended by opinion and sense. And there is a
third nature, which is space, and is eternal, and admits not of
destruction and provides a home for all created things, and is
apprehended without the help of sense, by a kind of spurious
reason, and is hardly real; which we beholding as in a dream, say
of all existence that it must of necessity be in some place and
occupy a space, but that what is neither in heaven nor in earth
has no existence. Of these and other things of the same kind,
relating to the true and waking reality of nature, we have only
this dreamlike sense, and we are unable to cast off sleep and
determine the truth about them. For an image, since the reality,
after which it is modelled, does not belong to it, and it exists
ever as the fleeting shadow of some other, must be inferred to be
in another (i.e. in space), grasping existence in some way or
other, or it could not be at all. But true and exact reason,
vindicating the nature of true being, maintains that while two
things (i.e. the image and space) are different they cannot exist
one of them in the other and so be one and also two at the same
time.
Thus have I concisely given the result of my thoughts; and my
verdict is that being and space and generation, these three,
existed in their three ways before the heaven; and that the nurse
of generation, moistened by water and inflamed by fire, and
receiving the forms of earth and air, and experiencing all the
affections which accompany these, presented a strange variety of
appearances; and being full of powers which were neither similar
nor equally balanced, was never in any part in a state of
equipoise, but swaying unevenly hither and thither, was shaken by
them, and by its motion again shook them; and the elements when
moved were separated and carried continually, some one way, some
another; as, when grain is shaken and winnowed by fans and other
instruments used in the threshing of corn, the close and heavy
particles are borne away and settle in one direction, and the
loose and light particles in another. In this manner, the four
kinds or elements were then shaken by the receiving vessel,
which, moving like a winnowing machine, scattered far away from
one another the elements most unlike, and forced the most similar
elements into close contact. Wherefore also the various elements
had different places before they were arranged so as to form the
universe. At first, they were all without reason and measure. But
when the world began to get into order, fire and water and earth
and air had only certain faint traces of themselves, and were
altogether such as everything might be expected to be in the
absence of God; this, I say, was their nature at that time, and
God fashioned them by form and number. Let it be consistently
maintained by us in all that we say that God made them as far as
possible the fairest and best, out of things which were not fair
and good. And now I will endeavour to show you the disposition
and generation of them by an unaccustomed argument, which I am
compelled to use; but I believe that you will be able to follow
me, for your education has made you familiar with the methods of
science.
In the first place, then, as is evident to all, fire and earth
and water and air are bodies. And every sort of body possesses
solidity, and every solid must necessarily be contained in
planes; and every plane rectilinear figure is composed of
triangles; and all triangles are originally of two kinds, both of
which are made up of one right and two acute angles; one of them
has at either end of the base the half of a divided right angle,
having equal sides, while in the other the right angle is divided
into unequal parts, having unequal sides. These, then, proceeding
by a combination of probability with demonstration, we assume to
be the original elements of fire and the other bodies; but the
principles which are prior to these God only knows, and he of men
who is the friend of God. And next we have to determine what are
the four most beautiful bodies which are unlike one another, and
of which some are capable of resolution into one another; for
having discovered thus much, we shall know the true origin of
earth and fire and of the proportionate and intermediate
elements. And then we shall not be willing to allow that there
are any distinct kinds of visible bodies fairer than these.
Wherefore we must endeavour to construct the four forms of bodies
which excel in beauty, and then we shall be able to say that we
have sufficiently apprehended their nature. Now of the two
triangles, the isosceles has one form only; the scalene or
unequal-sided has an infinite number. Of the infinite forms we
must select the most beautiful, if we are to proceed in due
order, and any one who can point out a more beautiful form than
ours for the construction of these bodies, shall carry off the
palm, not as an enemy, but as a friend. Now, the one which we
maintain to be the most beautiful of all the many triangles (and
we need not speak of the others) is that of which the double
forms a third triangle which is equilateral; the reason of this
would be long to tell; he who disproves what we are saying, and
shows that we are mistaken, may claim a friendly victory. Then
let us choose two triangles, out of which fire and the other
elements have been constructed, one isosceles, the other having
the square of the longer side equal to three times the square of
the lesser side.
Now is the time to explain what was before obscurely said: there
was an error in imagining that all the four elements might be
generated by and into one another; this, I say, was an erroneous
supposition, for there are generated from the triangles which we
have selected four kinds—three from the one which has the sides
unequal; the fourth alone is framed out of the isosceles
triangle. Hence they cannot all be resolved into one another, a
great number of small bodies being combined into a few large
ones, or the converse. But three of them can be thus resolved and
compounded, for they all spring from one, and when the greater
bodies are broken up, many small bodies will spring up out of
them and take their own proper figures; or, again, when many
small bodies are dissolved into their triangles, if they become
one, they will form one large mass of another kind. So much for
their passage into one another. I have now to speak of their
several kinds, and show out of what combinations of numbers each
of them was formed. The first will be the simplest and smallest
construction, and its element is that triangle which has its
hypotenuse twice the lesser side. When two such triangles are
joined at the diagonal, and this is repeated three times, and the
triangles rest their diagonals and shorter sides on the same
point as a centre, a single equilateral triangle is formed out of
six triangles; and four equilateral triangles, if put together,
make out of every three plane angles one solid angle, being that
which is nearest to the most obtuse of plane angles; and out of
the combination of these four angles arises the first solid form
which distributes into equal and similar parts the whole circle
in which it is inscribed. The second species of solid is formed
out of the same triangles, which unite as eight equilateral
triangles and form one solid angle out of four plane angles, and
out of six such angles the second body is completed. And the
third body is made up of 120 triangular elements, forming twelve
solid angles, each of them included in five plane equilateral
triangles, having altogether twenty bases, each of which is an
equilateral triangle. The one element (that is, the triangle
which has its hypotenuse twice the lesser side) having generated
these figures, generated no more; but the isosceles triangle
produced the fourth elementary figure, which is compounded of
four such triangles, joining their right angles in a centre, and
forming one equilateral quadrangle. Six of these united form
eight solid angles, each of which is made by the combination of
three plane right angles; the figure of the body thus composed is
a cube, having six plane quadrangular equilateral bases. There
was yet a fifth combination which God used in the delineation of
the universe.
Now, he who, duly reflecting on all this, enquires whether the
worlds are to be regarded as indefinite or definite in number,
will be of opinion that the notion of their indefiniteness is
characteristic of a sadly indefinite and ignorant mind. He,
however, who raises the question whether they are to be truly
regarded as one or five, takes up a more reasonable position.
Arguing from probabilities, I am of opinion that they are one;
another, regarding the question from another point of view, will
be of another mind. But, leaving this enquiry, let us proceed to
distribute the elementary forms, which have now been created in
idea, among the four elements.
To earth, then, let us assign the cubical form; for earth is the
most immoveable of the four and the most plastic of all bodies,
and that which has the most stable bases must of necessity be of
such a nature. Now, of the triangles which we assumed at first,
that which has two equal sides is by nature more firmly based
than that which has unequal sides; and of the compound figures
which are formed out of either, the plane equilateral quadrangle
has necessarily a more stable basis than the equilateral
triangle, both in the whole and in the parts. Wherefore, in
assigning this figure to earth, we adhere to probability; and to
water we assign that one of the remaining forms which is the
least moveable; and the most moveable of them to fire; and to air
that which is intermediate. Also we assign the smallest body to
fire, and the greatest to water, and the intermediate in size to
air; and, again, the acutest body to fire, and the next in
acuteness to air, and the third to water. Of all these elements,
that which has the fewest bases must necessarily be the most
moveable, for it must be the acutest and most penetrating in
every way, and also the lightest as being composed of the
smallest number of similar particles: and the second body has
similar properties in a second degree, and the third body in the
third degree. Let it be agreed, then, both according to strict
reason and according to probability, that the pyramid is the
solid which is the original element and seed of fire; and let us
assign the element which was next in the order of generation to
air, and the third to water. We must imagine all these to be so
small that no single particle of any of the four kinds is seen by
us on account of their smallness: but when many of them are
collected together their aggregates are seen. And the ratios of
their numbers, motions, and other properties, everywhere God, as
far as necessity allowed or gave consent, has exactly perfected,
and harmonized in due proportion.
From all that we have just been saying about the elements or
kinds, the most probable conclusion is as follows:—earth, when
meeting with fire and dissolved by its sharpness, whether the
dissolution take place in the fire itself or perhaps in some mass
of air or water, is borne hither and thither, until its parts,
meeting together and mutually harmonising, again become earth;
for they can never take any other form. But water, when divided
by fire or by air, on re-forming, may become one part fire and
two parts air; and a single volume of air divided becomes two of
fire. Again, when a small body of fire is contained in a larger
body of air or water or earth, and both are moving, and the fire
struggling is overcome and broken up, then two volumes of fire
form one volume of air; and when air is overcome and cut up into
small pieces, two and a half parts of air are condensed into one
part of water. Let us consider the matter in another way. When
one of the other elements is fastened upon by fire, and is cut by
the sharpness of its angles and sides, it coalesces with the
fire, and then ceases to be cut by them any longer. For no
element which is one and the same with itself can be changed by
or change another of the same kind and in the same state. But so
long as in the process of transition the weaker is fighting
against the stronger, the dissolution continues. Again, when a
few small particles, enclosed in many larger ones, are in process
of decomposition and extinction, they only cease from their
tendency to extinction when they consent to pass into the
conquering nature, and fire becomes air and air water. But if
bodies of another kind go and attack them (i.e. the small
particles), the latter continue to be dissolved until, being
completely forced back and dispersed, they make their escape to
their own kindred, or else, being overcome and assimilated to the
conquering power, they remain where they are and dwell with their
victors, and from being many become one. And owing to these
affections, all things are changing their place, for by the
motion of the receiving vessel the bulk of each class is
distributed into its proper place; but those things which become
unlike themselves and like other things, are hurried by the
shaking into the place of the things to which they grow like.
Now all unmixed and primary bodies are produced by such causes as
these. As to the subordinate species which are included in the
greater kinds, they are to be attributed to the varieties in the
structure of the two original triangles. For either structure did
not originally produce the triangle of one size only, but some
larger and some smaller, and there are as many sizes as there are
species of the four elements. Hence when they are mingled with
themselves and with one another there is an endless variety of
them, which those who would arrive at the probable truth of
nature ought duly to consider.
Unless a person comes to an understanding about the nature and
conditions of rest and motion, he will meet with many
difficulties in the discussion which follows. Something has been
said of this matter already, and something more remains to be
said, which is, that motion never exists in what is uniform. For
to conceive that anything can be moved without a mover is hard or
indeed impossible, and equally impossible to conceive that there
can be a mover unless there be something which can be
moved—motion cannot exist where either of these are wanting, and
for these to be uniform is impossible; wherefore we must assign
rest to uniformity and motion to the want of uniformity. Now
inequality is the cause of the nature which is wanting in
uniformity; and of this we have already described the origin. But
there still remains the further point—why things when divided
after their kinds do not cease to pass through one another and to
change their place—which we will now proceed to explain. In the
revolution of the universe are comprehended all the four
elements, and this being circular and having a tendency to come
together, compresses everything and will not allow any place to
be left void. Wherefore, also, fire above all things penetrates
everywhere, and air next, as being next in rarity of the
elements; and the two other elements in like manner penetrate
according to their degrees of rarity. For those things which are
composed of the largest particles have the largest void left in
their compositions, and those which are composed of the smallest
particles have the least. And the contraction caused by the
compression thrusts the smaller particles into the interstices of
the larger. And thus, when the small parts are placed side by
side with the larger, and the lesser divide the greater and the
greater unite the lesser, all the elements are borne up and down
and hither and thither towards their own places; for the change
in the size of each changes its position in space. And these
causes generate an inequality which is always maintained, and is
continually creating a perpetual motion of the elements in all
time.
In the next place we have to consider that there are divers kinds
of fire. There are, for example, first, flame; and secondly,
those emanations of flame which do not burn but only give light
to the eyes; thirdly, the remains of fire, which are seen in
red-hot embers after the flame has been extinguished. There are
similar differences in the air; of which the brightest part is
called the aether, and the most turbid sort mist and darkness;
and there are various other nameless kinds which arise from the
inequality of the triangles. Water, again, admits in the first
place of a division into two kinds; the one liquid and the other
fusile. The liquid kind is composed of the small and unequal
particles of water; and moves itself and is moved by other bodies
owing to the want of uniformity and the shape of its particles;
whereas the fusile kind, being formed of large and uniform
particles, is more stable than the other, and is heavy and
compact by reason of its uniformity. But when fire gets in and
dissolves the particles and destroys the uniformity, it has
greater mobility, and becoming fluid is thrust forth by the
neighbouring air and spreads upon the earth; and this dissolution
of the solid masses is called melting, and their spreading out
upon the earth flowing. Again, when the fire goes out of the
fusile substance, it does not pass into a vacuum, but into the
neighbouring air; and the air which is displaced forces together
the liquid and still moveable mass into the place which was
occupied by the fire, and unites it with itself. Thus compressed
the mass resumes its equability, and is again at unity with
itself, because the fire which was the author of the inequality
has retreated; and this departure of the fire is called cooling,
and the coming together which follows upon it is termed
congealment. Of all the kinds termed fusile, that which is the
densest and is formed out of the finest and most uniform parts is
that most precious possession called gold, which is hardened by
filtration through rock; this is unique in kind, and has both a
glittering and a yellow colour. A shoot of gold, which is so
dense as to be very hard, and takes a black colour, is termed
adamant. There is also another kind which has parts nearly like
gold, and of which there are several species; it is denser than
gold, and it contains a small and fine portion of earth, and is
therefore harder, yet also lighter because of the great
interstices which it has within itself; and this substance, which
is one of the bright and denser kinds of water, when solidified
is called copper. There is an alloy of earth mingled with it,
which, when the two parts grow old and are disunited, shows
itself separately and is called rust. The remaining phenomena of
the same kind there will be no difficulty in reasoning out by the
method of probabilities. A man may sometimes set aside
meditations about eternal things, and for recreation turn to
consider the truths of generation which are probable only; he
will thus gain a pleasure not to be repented of, and secure for
himself while he lives a wise and moderate pastime. Let us grant
ourselves this indulgence, and go through the probabilities
relating to the same subjects which follow next in order.
Water which is mingled with fire, so much as is fine and liquid
(being so called by reason of its motion and the way in which it
rolls along the ground), and soft, because its bases give way and
are less stable than those of earth, when separated from fire and
air and isolated, becomes more uniform, and by their retirement
is compressed into itself; and if the condensation be very great,
the water above the earth becomes hail, but on the earth, ice;
and that which is congealed in a less degree and is only half
solid, when above the earth is called snow, and when upon the
earth, and condensed from dew, hoar-frost. Then, again, there are
the numerous kinds of water which have been mingled with one
another, and are distilled through plants which grow in the
earth; and this whole class is called by the name of juices or
saps. The unequal admixture of these fluids creates a variety of
species; most of them are nameless, but four which are of a fiery
nature are clearly distinguished and have names. First, there is
wine, which warms the soul as well as the body: secondly, there
is the oily nature, which is smooth and divides the visual ray,
and for this reason is bright and shining and of a glistening
appearance, including pitch, the juice of the castor berry, oil
itself, and other things of a like kind: thirdly, there is the
class of substances which expand the contracted parts of the
mouth, until they return to their natural state, and by reason of
this property create sweetness;—these are included under the
general name of honey: and, lastly, there is a frothy nature,
which differs from all juices, having a burning quality which
dissolves the flesh; it is called opos (a vegetable acid).
As to the kinds of earth, that which is filtered through water
passes into stone in the following manner:—The water which mixes
with the earth and is broken up in the process changes into air,
and taking this form mounts into its own place. But as there is
no surrounding vacuum it thrusts away the neighbouring air, and
this being rendered heavy, and, when it is displaced, having been
poured around the mass of earth, forcibly compresses it and
drives it into the vacant space whence the new air had come up;
and the earth when compressed by the air into an indissoluble
union with water becomes rock. The fairer sort is that which is
made up of equal and similar parts and is transparent; that which
has the opposite qualities is inferior. But when all the watery
part is suddenly drawn out by fire, a more brittle substance is
formed, to which we give the name of pottery. Sometimes also
moisture may remain, and the earth which has been fused by fire
becomes, when cool, a certain stone of a black colour. A like
separation of the water which had been copiously mingled with
them may occur in two substances composed of finer particles of
earth and of a briny nature; out of either of them a
half-solid-body is then formed, soluble in water—the one, soda,
which is used for purging away oil and earth, the other, salt,
which harmonizes so well in combinations pleasing to the palate,
and is, as the law testifies, a substance dear to the gods. The
compounds of earth and water are not soluble by water, but by
fire only, and for this reason:—Neither fire nor air melt masses
of earth; for their particles, being smaller than the interstices
in its structure, have plenty of room to move without forcing
their way, and so they leave the earth unmelted and undissolved;
but particles of water, which are larger, force a passage, and
dissolve and melt the earth. Wherefore earth when not
consolidated by force is dissolved by water only; when
consolidated, by nothing but fire; for this is the only body
which can find an entrance. The cohesion of water again, when
very strong, is dissolved by fire only—when weaker, then either
by air or fire—the former entering the interstices, and the
latter penetrating even the triangles. But nothing can dissolve
air, when strongly condensed, which does not reach the elements
or triangles; or if not strongly condensed, then only fire can
dissolve it. As to bodies composed of earth and water, while the
water occupies the vacant interstices of the earth in them which
are compressed by force, the particles of water which approach
them from without, finding no entrance, flow around the entire
mass and leave it undissolved; but the particles of fire,
entering into the interstices of the water, do to the water what
water does to earth and fire to air (The text seems to be
corrupt.), and are the sole causes of the compound body of earth
and water liquefying and becoming fluid. Now these bodies are of
two kinds; some of them, such as glass and the fusible sort of
stones, have less water than they have earth; on the other hand,
substances of the nature of wax and incense have more of water
entering into their composition.
I have thus shown the various classes of bodies as they are
diversified by their forms and combinations and changes into one
another, and now I must endeavour to set forth their affections
and the causes of them. In the first place, the bodies which I
have been describing are necessarily objects of sense. But we
have not yet considered the origin of flesh, or what belongs to
flesh, or of that part of the soul which is mortal. And these
things cannot be adequately explained without also explaining the
affections which are concerned with sensation, nor the latter
without the former: and yet to explain them together is hardly
possible; for which reason we must assume first one or the other
and afterwards examine the nature of our hypothesis. In order,
then, that the affections may follow regularly after the
elements, let us presuppose the existence of body and soul.
First, let us enquire what we mean by saying that fire is hot;
and about this we may reason from the dividing or cutting power
which it exercises on our bodies. We all of us feel that fire is
sharp; and we may further consider the fineness of the sides, and
the sharpness of the angles, and the smallness of the particles,
and the swiftness of the motion—all this makes the action of fire
violent and sharp, so that it cuts whatever it meets. And we must
not forget that the original figure of fire (i.e. the pyramid),
more than any other form, has a dividing power which cuts our
bodies into small pieces (Kepmatizei), and thus naturally
produces that affection which we call heat; and hence the origin
of the name (thepmos, Kepma). Now, the opposite of this is
sufficiently manifest; nevertheless we will not fail to describe
it. For the larger particles of moisture which surround the body,
entering in and driving out the lesser, but not being able to
take their places, compress the moist principle in us; and this
from being unequal and disturbed, is forced by them into a state
of rest, which is due to equability and compression. But things
which are contracted contrary to nature are by nature at war, and
force themselves apart; and to this war and convulsion the name
of shivering and trembling is given; and the whole affection and
the cause of the affection are both termed cold. That is called
hard to which our flesh yields, and soft which yields to our
flesh; and things are also termed hard and soft relatively to one
another. That which yields has a small base; but that which rests
on quadrangular bases is firmly posed and belongs to the class
which offers the greatest resistance; so too does that which is
the most compact and therefore most repellent. The nature of the
light and the heavy will be best understood when examined in
connexion with our notions of above and below; for it is quite a
mistake to suppose that the universe is parted into two regions,
separate from and opposite to each other, the one a lower to
which all things tend which have any bulk, and an upper to which
things only ascend against their will. For as the universe is in
the form of a sphere, all the extremities, being equidistant from
the centre, are equally extremities, and the centre, which is
equidistant from them, is equally to be regarded as the opposite
of them all. Such being the nature of the world, when a person
says that any of these points is above or below, may he not be
justly charged with using an improper expression? For the centre
of the world cannot be rightly called either above or below, but
is the centre and nothing else; and the circumference is not the
centre, and has in no one part of itself a different relation to
the centre from what it has in any of the opposite parts. Indeed,
when it is in every direction similar, how can one rightly give
to it names which imply opposition? For if there were any solid
body in equipoise at the centre of the universe, there would be
nothing to draw it to this extreme rather than to that, for they
are all perfectly similar; and if a person were to go round the
world in a circle, he would often, when standing at the antipodes
of his former position, speak of the same point as above and
below; for, as I was saying just now, to speak of the whole which
is in the form of a globe as having one part above and another
below is not like a sensible man. The reason why these names are
used, and the circumstances under which they are ordinarily
applied by us to the division of the heavens, may be elucidated
by the following supposition:—if a person were to stand in that
part of the universe which is the appointed place of fire, and
where there is the great mass of fire to which fiery bodies
gather—if, I say, he were to ascend thither, and, having the
power to do this, were to abstract particles of fire and put them
in scales and weigh them, and then, raising the balance, were to
draw the fire by force towards the uncongenial element of the
air, it would be very evident that he could compel the smaller
mass more readily than the larger; for when two things are
simultaneously raised by one and the same power, the smaller body
must necessarily yield to the superior power with less reluctance
than the larger; and the larger body is called heavy and said to
tend downwards, and the smaller body is called light and said to
tend upwards. And we may detect ourselves who are upon the earth
doing precisely the same thing. For we often separate earthy
natures, and sometimes earth itself, and draw them into the
uncongenial element of air by force and contrary to nature, both
clinging to their kindred elements. But that which is smaller
yields to the impulse given by us towards the dissimilar element
more easily than the larger; and so we call the former light, and
the place towards which it is impelled we call above, and the
contrary state and place we call heavy and below respectively.
Now the relations of these must necessarily vary, because the
principal masses of the different elements hold opposite
positions; for that which is light, heavy, below or above in one
place will be found to be and become contrary and transverse and
every way diverse in relation to that which is light, heavy,
below or above in an opposite place. And about all of them this
has to be considered:—that the tendency of each towards its
kindred element makes the body which is moved heavy, and the
place towards which the motion tends below, but things which have
an opposite tendency we call by an opposite name. Such are the
causes which we assign to these phenomena. As to the smooth and
the rough, any one who sees them can explain the reason of them
to another. For roughness is hardness mingled with irregularity,
and smoothness is produced by the joint effect of uniformity and
density.
The most important of the affections which concern the whole body
remains to be considered—that is, the cause of pleasure and pain
in the perceptions of which I have been speaking, and in all
other things which are perceived by sense through the parts of
the body, and have both pains and pleasures attendant on them.
Let us imagine the causes of every affection, whether of sense or
not, to be of the following nature, remembering that we have
already distinguished between the nature which is easy and which
is hard to move; for this is the direction in which we must hunt
the prey which we mean to take. A body which is of a nature to be
easily moved, on receiving an impression however slight, spreads
abroad the motion in a circle, the parts communicating with each
other, until at last, reaching the principle of mind, they
announce the quality of the agent. But a body of the opposite
kind, being immobile, and not extending to the surrounding
region, merely receives the impression, and does not stir any of
the neighbouring parts; and since the parts do not distribute the
original impression to other parts, it has no effect of motion on
the whole animal, and therefore produces no effect on the
patient. This is true of the bones and hair and other more earthy
parts of the human body; whereas what was said above relates
mainly to sight and hearing, because they have in them the
greatest amount of fire and air. Now we must conceive of pleasure
and pain in this way. An impression produced in us contrary to
nature and violent, if sudden, is painful; and, again, the sudden
return to nature is pleasant; but a gentle and gradual return is
imperceptible and vice versa. On the other hand the impression of
sense which is most easily produced is most readily felt, but is
not accompanied by pleasure or pain; such, for example, are the
affections of the sight, which, as we said above, is a body
naturally uniting with our body in the day-time; for cuttings and
burnings and other affections which happen to the sight do not
give pain, nor is there pleasure when the sight returns to its
natural state; but the sensations are clearest and strongest
according to the manner in which the eye is affected by the
object, and itself strikes and touches it; there is no violence
either in the contraction or dilation of the eye. But bodies
formed of larger particles yield to the agent only with a
struggle; and then they impart their motions to the whole and
cause pleasure and pain—pain when alienated from their natural
conditions, and pleasure when restored to them. Things which
experience gradual withdrawings and emptyings of their nature,
and great and sudden replenishments, fail to perceive the
emptying, but are sensible of the replenishment; and so they
occasion no pain, but the greatest pleasure, to the mortal part
of the soul, as is manifest in the case of perfumes. But things
which are changed all of a sudden, and only gradually and with
difficulty return to their own nature, have effects in every way
opposite to the former, as is evident in the case of burnings and
cuttings of the body.
Thus have we discussed the general affections of the whole body,
and the names of the agents which produce them. And now I will
endeavour to speak of the affections of particular parts, and the
causes and agents of them, as far as I am able. In the first
place let us set forth what was omitted when we were speaking of
juices, concerning the affections peculiar to the tongue. These
too, like most of the other affections, appear to be caused by
certain contractions and dilations, but they have besides more of
roughness and smoothness than is found in other affections; for
whenever earthy particles enter into the small veins which are
the testing instruments of the tongue, reaching to the heart, and
fall upon the moist, delicate portions of flesh—when, as they are
dissolved, they contract and dry up the little veins, they are
astringent if they are rougher, but if not so rough, then only
harsh. Those of them which are of an abstergent nature, and purge
the whole surface of the tongue, if they do it in excess, and so
encroach as to consume some part of the flesh itself, like potash
and soda, are all termed bitter. But the particles which are
deficient in the alkaline quality, and which cleanse only
moderately, are called salt, and having no bitterness or
roughness, are regarded as rather agreeable than otherwise.
Bodies which share in and are made smooth by the heat of the
mouth, and which are inflamed, and again in turn inflame that
which heats them, and which are so light that they are carried
upwards to the sensations of the head, and cut all that comes in
their way, by reason of these qualities in them, are all termed
pungent. But when these same particles, refined by putrefaction,
enter into the narrow veins, and are duly proportioned to the
particles of earth and air which are there, they set them
whirling about one another, and while they are in a whirl cause
them to dash against and enter into one another, and so form
hollows surrounding the particles that enter—which watery vessels
of air (for a film of moisture, sometimes earthy, sometimes pure,
is spread around the air) are hollow spheres of water; and those
of them which are pure, are transparent, and are called bubbles,
while those composed of the earthy liquid, which is in a state of
general agitation and effervescence, are said to boil or
ferment—of all these affections the cause is termed acid. And
there is the opposite affection arising from an opposite cause,
when the mass of entering particles, immersed in the moisture of
the mouth, is congenial to the tongue, and smooths and oils over
the roughness, and relaxes the parts which are unnaturally
contracted, and contracts the parts which are relaxed, and
disposes them all according to their nature;—that sort of remedy
of violent affections is pleasant and agreeable to every man, and
has the name sweet. But enough of this.
The faculty of smell does not admit of differences of kind; for
all smells are of a half-formed nature, and no element is so
proportioned as to have any smell. The veins about the nose are
too narrow to admit earth and water, and too wide to detain fire
and air; and for this reason no one ever perceives the smell of
any of them; but smells always proceed from bodies that are damp,
or putrefying, or liquefying, or evaporating, and are perceptible
only in the intermediate state, when water is changing into air
and air into water; and all of them are either vapour or mist.
That which is passing out of air into water is mist, and that
which is passing from water into air is vapour; and hence all
smells are thinner than water and thicker than air. The proof of
this is, that when there is any obstruction to the respiration,
and a man draws in his breath by force, then no smell filters
through, but the air without the smell alone penetrates.
Wherefore the varieties of smell have no name, and they have not
many, or definite and simple kinds; but they are distinguished
only as painful and pleasant, the one sort irritating and
disturbing the whole cavity which is situated between the head
and the navel, the other having a soothing influence, and
restoring this same region to an agreeable and natural condition.
In considering the third kind of sense, hearing, we must speak of
the causes in which it originates. We may in general assume sound
to be a blow which passes through the ears, and is transmitted by
means of the air, the brain, and the blood, to the soul, and that
hearing is the vibration of this blow, which begins in the head
and ends in the region of the liver. The sound which moves
swiftly is acute, and the sound which moves slowly is grave, and
that which is regular is equable and smooth, and the reverse is
harsh. A great body of sound is loud, and a small body of sound
the reverse. Respecting the harmonies of sound I must hereafter
speak.
There is a fourth class of sensible things, having many intricate
varieties, which must now be distinguished. They are called by
the general name of colours, and are a flame which emanates from
every sort of body, and has particles corresponding to the sense
of sight. I have spoken already, in what has preceded, of the
causes which generate sight, and in this place it will be natural
and suitable to give a rational theory of colours.
Of the particles coming from other bodies which fall upon the
sight, some are smaller and some are larger, and some are equal
to the parts of the sight itself. Those which are equal are
imperceptible, and we call them transparent. The larger produce
contraction, the smaller dilation, in the sight, exercising a
power akin to that of hot and cold bodies on the flesh, or of
astringent bodies on the tongue, or of those heating bodies which
we termed pungent. White and black are similar effects of
contraction and dilation in another sphere, and for this reason
have a different appearance. Wherefore, we ought to term white
that which dilates the visual ray, and the opposite of this is
black. There is also a swifter motion of a different sort of fire
which strikes and dilates the ray of sight until it reaches the
eyes, forcing a way through their passages and melting them, and
eliciting from them a union of fire and water which we call
tears, being itself an opposite fire which comes to them from an
opposite direction—the inner fire flashes forth like lightning,
and the outer finds a way in and is extinguished in the moisture,
and all sorts of colours are generated by the mixture. This
affection is termed dazzling, and the object which produces it is
called bright and flashing. There is another sort of fire which
is intermediate, and which reaches and mingles with the moisture
of the eye without flashing; and in this, the fire mingling with
the ray of the moisture, produces a colour like blood, to which
we give the name of red. A bright hue mingled with red and white
gives the colour called auburn (Greek). The law of proportion,
however, according to which the several colours are formed, even
if a man knew he would be foolish in telling, for he could not
give any necessary reason, nor indeed any tolerable or probable
explanation of them. Again, red, when mingled with black and
white, becomes purple, but it becomes umber (Greek) when the
colours are burnt as well as mingled and the black is more
thoroughly mixed with them. Flame-colour (Greek) is produced by a
union of auburn and dun (Greek), and dun by an admixture of black
and white; pale yellow (Greek), by an admixture of white and
auburn. White and bright meeting, and falling upon a full black,
become dark blue (Greek), and when dark blue mingles with white,
a light blue (Greek) colour is formed, as flame-colour with black
makes leek green (Greek). There will be no difficulty in seeing
how and by what mixtures the colours derived from these are made
according to the rules of probability. He, however, who should
attempt to verify all this by experiment, would forget the
difference of the human and divine nature. For God only has the
knowledge and also the power which are able to combine many
things into one and again resolve the one into many. But no man
either is or ever will be able to accomplish either the one or
the other operation.
These are the elements, thus of necessity then subsisting, which
the creator of the fairest and best of created things associated
with himself, when he made the self-sufficing and most perfect
God, using the necessary causes as his ministers in the
accomplishment of his work, but himself contriving the good in
all his creations. Wherefore we may distinguish two sorts of
causes, the one divine and the other necessary, and may seek for
the divine in all things, as far as our nature admits, with a
view to the blessed life; but the necessary kind only for the
sake of the divine, considering that without them and when
isolated from them, these higher things for which we look cannot
be apprehended or received or in any way shared by us.
Seeing, then, that we have now prepared for our use the various
classes of causes which are the material out of which the
remainder of our discourse must be woven, just as wood is the
material of the carpenter, let us revert in a few words to the
point at which we began, and then endeavour to add on a suitable
ending to the beginning of our tale.
As I said at first, when all things were in disorder God created
in each thing in relation to itself, and in all things in
relation to each other, all the measures and harmonies which they
could possibly receive. For in those days nothing had any
proportion except by accident; nor did any of the things which
now have names deserve to be named at all—as, for example, fire,
water, and the rest of the elements. All these the creator first
set in order, and out of them he constructed the universe, which
was a single animal comprehending in itself all other animals,
mortal and immortal. Now of the divine, he himself was the
creator, but the creation of the mortal he committed to his
offspring. And they, imitating him, received from him the
immortal principle of the soul; and around this they proceeded to
fashion a mortal body, and made it to be the vehicle of the soul,
and constructed within the body a soul of another nature which
was mortal, subject to terrible and irresistible
affections,—first of all, pleasure, the greatest incitement to
evil; then, pain, which deters from good; also rashness and fear,
two foolish counsellors, anger hard to be appeased, and hope
easily led astray;—these they mingled with irrational sense and
with all-daring love according to necessary laws, and so framed
man. Wherefore, fearing to pollute the divine any more than was
absolutely unavoidable, they gave to the mortal nature a separate
habitation in another part of the body, placing the neck between
them to be the isthmus and boundary, which they constructed
between the head and breast, to keep them apart. And in the
breast, and in what is termed the thorax, they encased the mortal
soul; and as the one part of this was superior and the other
inferior they divided the cavity of the thorax into two parts, as
the women’s and men’s apartments are divided in houses, and
placed the midriff to be a wall of partition between them. That
part of the inferior soul which is endowed with courage and
passion and loves contention they settled nearer the head, midway
between the midriff and the neck, in order that it might be under
the rule of reason and might join with it in controlling and
restraining the desires when they are no longer willing of their
own accord to obey the word of command issuing from the citadel.
The heart, the knot of the veins and the fountain of the blood
which races through all the limbs, was set in the place of guard,
that when the might of passion was roused by reason making
proclamation of any wrong assailing them from without or being
perpetrated by the desires within, quickly the whole power of
feeling in the body, perceiving these commands and threats, might
obey and follow through every turn and alley, and thus allow the
principle of the best to have the command in all of them. But the
gods, foreknowing that the palpitation of the heart in the
expectation of danger and the swelling and excitement of passion
was caused by fire, formed and implanted as a supporter to the
heart the lung, which was, in the first place, soft and
bloodless, and also had within hollows like the pores of a
sponge, in order that by receiving the breath and the drink, it
might give coolness and the power of respiration and alleviate
the heat. Wherefore they cut the air-channels leading to the
lung, and placed the lung about the heart as a soft spring, that,
when passion was rife within, the heart, beating against a
yielding body, might be cooled and suffer less, and might thus
become more ready to join with passion in the service of reason.
The part of the soul which desires meats and drinks and the other
things of which it has need by reason of the bodily nature, they
placed between the midriff and the boundary of the navel,
contriving in all this region a sort of manger for the food of
the body; and there they bound it down like a wild animal which
was chained up with man, and must be nourished if man was to
exist. They appointed this lower creation his place here in order
that he might be always feeding at the manger, and have his
dwelling as far as might be from the council-chamber, making as
little noise and disturbance as possible, and permitting the best
part to advise quietly for the good of the whole. And knowing
that this lower principle in man would not comprehend reason, and
even if attaining to some degree of perception would never
naturally care for rational notions, but that it would be led
away by phantoms and visions night and day,—to be a remedy for
this, God combined with it the liver, and placed it in the house
of the lower nature, contriving that it should be solid and
smooth, and bright and sweet, and should also have a bitter
quality, in order that the power of thought, which proceeds from
the mind, might be reflected as in a mirror which receives
likenesses of objects and gives back images of them to the sight;
and so might strike terror into the desires, when, making use of
the bitter part of the liver, to which it is akin, it comes
threatening and invading, and diffusing this bitter element
swiftly through the whole liver produces colours like bile, and
contracting every part makes it wrinkled and rough; and twisting
out of its right place and contorting the lobe and closing and
shutting up the vessels and gates, causes pain and loathing. And
the converse happens when some gentle inspiration of the
understanding pictures images of an opposite character, and
allays the bile and bitterness by refusing to stir or touch the
nature opposed to itself, but by making use of the natural
sweetness of the liver, corrects all things and makes them to be
right and smooth and free, and renders the portion of the soul
which resides about the liver happy and joyful, enabling it to
pass the night in peace, and to practise divination in sleep,
inasmuch as it has no share in mind and reason. For the authors
of our being, remembering the command of their father when he
bade them create the human race as good as they could, that they
might correct our inferior parts and make them to attain a
measure of truth, placed in the liver the seat of divination. And
herein is a proof that God has given the art of divination not to
the wisdom, but to the foolishness of man. No man, when in his
wits, attains prophetic truth and inspiration; but when he
receives the inspired word, either his intelligence is enthralled
in sleep, or he is demented by some distemper or possession. And
he who would understand what he remembers to have been said,
whether in a dream or when he was awake, by the prophetic and
inspired nature, or would determine by reason the meaning of the
apparitions which he has seen, and what indications they afford
to this man or that, of past, present or future good and evil,
must first recover his wits. But, while he continues demented, he
cannot judge of the visions which he sees or the words which he
utters; the ancient saying is very true, that ‘only a man who has
his wits can act or judge about himself and his own affairs.’ And
for this reason it is customary to appoint interpreters to be
judges of the true inspiration. Some persons call them prophets;
they are quite unaware that they are only the expositors of dark
sayings and visions, and are not to be called prophets at all,
but only interpreters of prophecy.
Such is the nature of the liver, which is placed as we have
described in order that it may give prophetic intimations. During
the life of each individual these intimations are plainer, but
after his death the liver becomes blind, and delivers oracles too
obscure to be intelligible. The neighbouring organ (the spleen)
is situated on the left-hand side, and is constructed with a view
of keeping the liver bright and pure,—like a napkin, always ready
prepared and at hand to clean the mirror. And hence, when any
impurities arise in the region of the liver by reason of
disorders of the body, the loose nature of the spleen, which is
composed of a hollow and bloodless tissue, receives them all and
clears them away, and when filled with the unclean matter, swells
and festers, but, again, when the body is purged, settles down
into the same place as before, and is humbled.
Concerning the soul, as to which part is mortal and which divine,
and how and why they are separated, and where located, if God
acknowledges that we have spoken the truth, then, and then only,
can we be confident; still, we may venture to assert that what
has been said by us is probable, and will be rendered more
probable by investigation. Let us assume thus much.
The creation of the rest of the body follows next in order, and
this we may investigate in a similar manner. And it appears to be
very meet that the body should be framed on the following
principles:—
The authors of our race were aware that we should be intemperate
in eating and drinking, and take a good deal more than was
necessary or proper, by reason of gluttony. In order then that
disease might not quickly destroy us, and lest our mortal race
should perish without fulfilling its end—intending to provide
against this, the gods made what is called the lower belly, to be
a receptacle for the superfluous meat and drink, and formed the
convolution of the bowels, so that the food might be prevented
from passing quickly through and compelling the body to require
more food, thus producing insatiable gluttony, and making the
whole race an enemy to philosophy and music, and rebellious
against the divinest element within us.
The bones and flesh, and other similar parts of us, were made as
follows. The first principle of all of them was the generation of
the marrow. For the bonds of life which unite the soul with the
body are made fast there, and they are the root and foundation of
the human race. The marrow itself is created out of other
materials: God took such of the primary triangles as were
straight and smooth, and were adapted by their perfection to
produce fire and water, and air and earth—these, I say, he
separated from their kinds, and mingling them in due proportions
with one another, made the marrow out of them to be a universal
seed of the whole race of mankind; and in this seed he then
planted and enclosed the souls, and in the original distribution
gave to the marrow as many and various forms as the different
kinds of souls were hereafter to receive. That which, like a
field, was to receive the divine seed, he made round every way,
and called that portion of the marrow, brain, intending that,
when an animal was perfected, the vessel containing this
substance should be the head; but that which was intended to
contain the remaining and mortal part of the soul he distributed
into figures at once round and elongated, and he called them all
by the name ‘marrow’; and to these, as to anchors, fastening the
bonds of the whole soul, he proceeded to fashion around them the
entire framework of our body, constructing for the marrow, first
of all a complete covering of bone.
Bone was composed by him in the following manner. Having sifted
pure and smooth earth he kneaded it and wetted it with marrow,
and after that he put it into fire and then into water, and once
more into fire and again into water—in this way by frequent
transfers from one to the other he made it insoluble by either.
Out of this he fashioned, as in a lathe, a globe made of bone,
which he placed around the brain, and in this he left a narrow
opening; and around the marrow of the neck and back he formed
vertebrae which he placed under one another like pivots,
beginning at the head and extending through the whole of the
trunk. Thus wishing to preserve the entire seed, he enclosed it
in a stone-like casing, inserting joints, and using in the
formation of them the power of the other or diverse as an
intermediate nature, that they might have motion and flexure.
Then again, considering that the bone would be too brittle and
inflexible, and when heated and again cooled would soon mortify
and destroy the seed within—having this in view, he contrived the
sinews and the flesh, that so binding all the members together by
the sinews, which admitted of being stretched and relaxed about
the vertebrae, he might thus make the body capable of flexion and
extension, while the flesh would serve as a protection against
the summer heat and against the winter cold, and also against
falls, softly and easily yielding to external bodies, like
articles made of felt; and containing in itself a warm moisture
which in summer exudes and makes the surface damp, would impart a
natural coolness to the whole body; and again in winter by the
help of this internal warmth would form a very tolerable defence
against the frost which surrounds it and attacks it from without.
He who modelled us, considering these things, mixed earth with
fire and water and blended them; and making a ferment of acid and
salt, he mingled it with them and formed soft and succulent
flesh. As for the sinews, he made them of a mixture of bone and
unfermented flesh, attempered so as to be in a mean, and gave
them a yellow colour; wherefore the sinews have a firmer and more
glutinous nature than flesh, but a softer and moister nature than
the bones. With these God covered the bones and marrow, binding
them together by sinews, and then enshrouded them all in an upper
covering of flesh. The more living and sensitive of the bones he
enclosed in the thinnest film of flesh, and those which had the
least life within them in the thickest and most solid flesh. So
again on the joints of the bones, where reason indicated that no
more was required, he placed only a thin covering of flesh, that
it might not interfere with the flexion of our bodies and make
them unwieldy because difficult to move; and also that it might
not, by being crowded and pressed and matted together, destroy
sensation by reason of its hardness, and impair the memory and
dull the edge of intelligence. Wherefore also the thighs and the
shanks and the hips, and the bones of the arms and the forearms,
and other parts which have no joints, and the inner bones, which
on account of the rarity of the soul in the marrow are destitute
of reason—all these are abundantly provided with flesh; but such
as have mind in them are in general less fleshy, except where the
creator has made some part solely of flesh in order to give
sensation,—as, for example, the tongue. But commonly this is not
the case. For the nature which comes into being and grows up in
us by a law of necessity, does not admit of the combination of
solid bone and much flesh with acute perceptions. More than any
other part the framework of the head would have had them, if they
could have co-existed, and the human race, having a strong and
fleshy and sinewy head, would have had a life twice or many times
as long as it now has, and also more healthy and free from pain.
But our creators, considering whether they should make a
longer-lived race which was worse, or a shorter-lived race which
was better, came to the conclusion that every one ought to prefer
a shorter span of life, which was better, to a longer one, which
was worse; and therefore they covered the head with thin bone,
but not with flesh and sinews, since it had no joints; and thus
the head was added, having more wisdom and sensation than the
rest of the body, but also being in every man far weaker. For
these reasons and after this manner God placed the sinews at the
extremity of the head, in a circle round the neck, and glued them
together by the principle of likeness and fastened the
extremities of the jawbones to them below the face, and the other
sinews he dispersed throughout the body, fastening limb to limb.
The framers of us framed the mouth, as now arranged, having teeth
and tongue and lips, with a view to the necessary and the good
contriving the way in for necessary purposes, the way out for the
best purposes; for that is necessary which enters in and gives
food to the body; but the river of speech, which flows out of a
man and ministers to the intelligence, is the fairest and noblest
of all streams. Still the head could neither be left a bare frame
of bones, on account of the extremes of heat and cold in the
different seasons, nor yet be allowed to be wholly covered, and
so become dull and senseless by reason of an overgrowth of flesh.
The fleshy nature was not therefore wholly dried up, but a large
sort of peel was parted off and remained over, which is now
called the skin. This met and grew by the help of the cerebral
moisture, and became the circular envelopment of the head. And
the moisture, rising up under the sutures, watered and closed in
the skin upon the crown, forming a sort of knot. The diversity of
the sutures was caused by the power of the courses of the soul
and of the food, and the more these struggled against one another
the more numerous they became, and fewer if the struggle were
less violent. This skin the divine power pierced all round with
fire, and out of the punctures which were thus made the moisture
issued forth, and the liquid and heat which was pure came away,
and a mixed part which was composed of the same material as the
skin, and had a fineness equal to the punctures, was borne up by
its own impulse and extended far outside the head, but being too
slow to escape, was thrust back by the external air, and rolled
up underneath the skin, where it took root. Thus the hair sprang
up in the skin, being akin to it because it is like threads of
leather, but rendered harder and closer through the pressure of
the cold, by which each hair, while in process of separation from
the skin, is compressed and cooled. Wherefore the creator formed
the head hairy, making use of the causes which I have mentioned,
and reflecting also that instead of flesh the brain needed the
hair to be a light covering or guard, which would give shade in
summer and shelter in winter, and at the same time would not
impede our quickness of perception. From the combination of
sinew, skin, and bone, in the structure of the finger, there
arises a triple compound, which, when dried up, takes the form of
one hard skin partaking of all three natures, and was fabricated
by these second causes, but designed by mind which is the
principal cause with an eye to the future. For our creators well
knew that women and other animals would some day be framed out of
men, and they further knew that many animals would require the
use of nails for many purposes; wherefore they fashioned in men
at their first creation the rudiments of nails. For this purpose
and for these reasons they caused skin, hair, and nails to grow
at the extremities of the limbs.
And now that all the parts and members of the mortal animal had
come together, since its life of necessity consisted of fire and
breath, and it therefore wasted away by dissolution and
depletion, the gods contrived the following remedy: They mingled
a nature akin to that of man with other forms and perceptions,
and thus created another kind of animal. These are the trees and
plants and seeds which have been improved by cultivation and are
now domesticated among us; anciently there were only the wild
kinds, which are older than the cultivated. For everything that
partakes of life may be truly called a living being, and the
animal of which we are now speaking partakes of the third kind of
soul, which is said to be seated between the midriff and the
navel, having no part in opinion or reason or mind, but only in
feelings of pleasure and pain and the desires which accompany
them. For this nature is always in a passive state, revolving in
and about itself, repelling the motion from without and using its
own, and accordingly is not endowed by nature with the power of
observing or reflecting on its own concerns. Wherefore it lives
and does not differ from a living being, but is fixed and rooted
in the same spot, having no power of self-motion.
Now after the superior powers had created all these natures to be
food for us who are of the inferior nature, they cut various
channels through the body as through a garden, that it might be
watered as from a running stream. In the first place, they cut
two hidden channels or veins down the back where the skin and the
flesh join, which answered severally to the right and left side
of the body. These they let down along the backbone, so as to
have the marrow of generation between them, where it was most
likely to flourish, and in order that the stream coming down from
above might flow freely to the other parts, and equalize the
irrigation. In the next place, they divided the veins about the
head, and interlacing them, they sent them in opposite
directions; those coming from the right side they sent to the
left of the body, and those from the left they diverted towards
the right, so that they and the skin might together form a bond
which should fasten the head to the body, since the crown of the
head was not encircled by sinews; and also in order that the
sensations from both sides might be distributed over the whole
body. And next, they ordered the water-courses of the body in a
manner which I will describe, and which will be more easily
understood if we begin by admitting that all things which have
lesser parts retain the greater, but the greater cannot retain
the lesser. Now of all natures fire has the smallest parts, and
therefore penetrates through earth and water and air and their
compounds, nor can anything hold it. And a similar principle
applies to the human belly; for when meats and drinks enter it,
it holds them, but it cannot hold air and fire, because the
particles of which they consist are smaller than its own
structure.
These elements, therefore, God employed for the sake of
distributing moisture from the belly into the veins, weaving
together a network of fire and air like a weel, having at the
entrance two lesser weels; further he constructed one of these
with two openings, and from the lesser weels he extended cords
reaching all round to the extremities of the network. All the
interior of the net he made of fire, but the lesser weels and
their cavity, of air. The network he took and spread over the
newly-formed animal in the following manner:—He let the lesser
weels pass into the mouth; there were two of them, and one he let
down by the air-pipes into the lungs, the other by the side of
the air-pipes into the belly. The former he divided into two
branches, both of which he made to meet at the channels of the
nose, so that when the way through the mouth did not act, the
streams of the mouth as well were replenished through the nose.
With the other cavity (i.e. of the greater weel) he enveloped the
hollow parts of the body, and at one time he made all this to
flow into the lesser weels, quite gently, for they are composed
of air, and at another time he caused the lesser weels to flow
back again; and the net he made to find a way in and out through
the pores of the body, and the rays of fire which are bound fast
within followed the passage of the air either way, never at any
time ceasing so long as the mortal being holds together. This
process, as we affirm, the name-giver named inspiration and
expiration. And all this movement, active as well as passive,
takes place in order that the body, being watered and cooled, may
receive nourishment and life; for when the respiration is going
in and out, and the fire, which is fast bound within, follows it,
and ever and anon moving to and fro, enters through the belly and
reaches the meat and drink, it dissolves them, and dividing them
into small portions and guiding them through the passages where
it goes, pumps them as from a fountain into the channels of the
veins, and makes the stream of the veins flow through the body as
through a conduit.
Let us once more consider the phenomena of respiration, and
enquire into the causes which have made it what it is. They are
as follows:—Seeing that there is no such thing as a vacuum into
which any of those things which are moved can enter, and the
breath is carried from us into the external air, the next point
is, as will be clear to every one, that it does not go into a
vacant space, but pushes its neighbour out of its place, and that
which is thrust out in turn drives out its neighbour; and in this
way everything of necessity at last comes round to that place
from whence the breath came forth, and enters in there, and
following the breath, fills up the vacant space; and this goes on
like the rotation of a wheel, because there can be no such thing
as a vacuum. Wherefore also the breast and the lungs, when they
emit the breath, are replenished by the air which surrounds the
body and which enters in through the pores of the flesh and is
driven round in a circle; and again, the air which is sent away
and passes out through the body forces the breath inwards through
the passage of the mouth and the nostrils. Now the origin of this
movement may be supposed to be as follows. In the interior of
every animal the hottest part is that which is around the blood
and veins; it is in a manner an internal fountain of fire, which
we compare to the network of a creel, being woven all of fire and
extended through the centre of the body, while the outer parts
are composed of air. Now we must admit that heat naturally
proceeds outward to its own place and to its kindred element; and
as there are two exits for the heat, the one out through the
body, and the other through the mouth and nostrils, when it moves
towards the one, it drives round the air at the other, and that
which is driven round falls into the fire and becomes warm, and
that which goes forth is cooled. But when the heat changes its
place, and the particles at the other exit grow warmer, the
hotter air inclining in that direction and carried towards its
native element, fire, pushes round the air at the other; and this
being affected in the same way and communicating the same
impulse, a circular motion swaying to and fro is produced by the
double process, which we call inspiration and expiration.
The phenomena of medical cupping-glasses and of the swallowing of
drink and of the projection of bodies, whether discharged in the
air or bowled along the ground, are to be investigated on a
similar principle; and swift and slow sounds, which appear to be
high and low, and are sometimes discordant on account of their
inequality, and then again harmonical on account of the equality
of the motion which they excite in us. For when the motions of
the antecedent swifter sounds begin to pause and the two are
equalized, the slower sounds overtake the swifter and then propel
them. When they overtake them they do not intrude a new and
discordant motion, but introduce the beginnings of a slower,
which answers to the swifter as it dies away, thus producing a
single mixed expression out of high and low, whence arises a
pleasure which even the unwise feel, and which to the wise
becomes a higher sort of delight, being an imitation of divine
harmony in mortal motions. Moreover, as to the flowing of water,
the fall of the thunderbolt, and the marvels that are observed
about the attraction of amber and the Heraclean stones,—in none
of these cases is there any attraction; but he who investigates
rightly, will find that such wonderful phenomena are attributable
to the combination of certain conditions—the non-existence of a
vacuum, the fact that objects push one another round, and that
they change places, passing severally into their proper positions
as they are divided or combined.
Such as we have seen, is the nature and such are the causes of
respiration,—the subject in which this discussion originated. For
the fire cuts the food and following the breath surges up within,
fire and breath rising together and filling the veins by drawing
up out of the belly and pouring into them the cut portions of the
food; and so the streams of food are kept flowing through the
whole body in all animals. And fresh cuttings from kindred
substances, whether the fruits of the earth or herb of the field,
which God planted to be our daily food, acquire all sorts of
colours by their inter-mixture; but red is the most pervading of
them, being created by the cutting action of fire and by the
impression which it makes on a moist substance; and hence the
liquid which circulates in the body has a colour such as we have
described. The liquid itself we call blood, which nourishes the
flesh and the whole body, whence all parts are watered and empty
places filled.
Now the process of repletion and evacuation is effected after the
manner of the universal motion by which all kindred substances
are drawn towards one another. For the external elements which
surround us are always causing us to consume away, and
distributing and sending off like to like; the particles of
blood, too, which are divided and contained within the frame of
the animal as in a sort of heaven, are compelled to imitate the
motion of the universe. Each, therefore, of the divided parts
within us, being carried to its kindred nature, replenishes the
void. When more is taken away than flows in, then we decay, and
when less, we grow and increase.
The frame of the entire creature when young has the triangles of
each kind new, and may be compared to the keel of a vessel which
is just off the stocks; they are locked firmly together and yet
the whole mass is soft and delicate, being freshly formed of
marrow and nurtured on milk. Now when the triangles out of which
meats and drinks are composed come in from without, and are
comprehended in the body, being older and weaker than the
triangles already there, the frame of the body gets the better of
them and its newer triangles cut them up, and so the animal grows
great, being nourished by a multitude of similar particles. But
when the roots of the triangles are loosened by having undergone
many conflicts with many things in the course of time, they are
no longer able to cut or assimilate the food which enters, but
are themselves easily divided by the bodies which come in from
without. In this way every animal is overcome and decays, and
this affection is called old age. And at last, when the bonds by
which the triangles of the marrow are united no longer hold, and
are parted by the strain of existence, they in turn loosen the
bonds of the soul, and she, obtaining a natural release, flies
away with joy. For that which takes place according to nature is
pleasant, but that which is contrary to nature is painful. And
thus death, if caused by disease or produced by wounds, is
painful and violent; but that sort of death which comes with old
age and fulfils the debt of nature is the easiest of deaths, and
is accompanied with pleasure rather than with pain.
Now every one can see whence diseases arise. There are four
natures out of which the body is compacted, earth and fire and
water and air, and the unnatural excess or defect of these, or
the change of any of them from its own natural place into
another, or—since there are more kinds than one of fire and of
the other elements—the assumption by any of these of a wrong
kind, or any similar irregularity, produces disorders and
diseases; for when any of them is produced or changed in a manner
contrary to nature, the parts which were previously cool grow
warm, and those which were dry become moist, and the light become
heavy, and the heavy light; all sorts of changes occur. For, as
we affirm, a thing can only remain the same with itself, whole
and sound, when the same is added to it, or subtracted from it,
in the same respect and in the same manner and in due proportion;
and whatever comes or goes away in violation of these laws causes
all manner of changes and infinite diseases and corruptions. Now
there is a second class of structures which are also natural, and
this affords a second opportunity of observing diseases to him
who would understand them. For whereas marrow and bone and flesh
and sinews are composed of the four elements, and the blood,
though after another manner, is likewise formed out of them, most
diseases originate in the way which I have described; but the
worst of all owe their severity to the fact that the generation
of these substances proceeds in a wrong order; they are then
destroyed. For the natural order is that the flesh and sinews
should be made of blood, the sinews out of the fibres to which
they are akin, and the flesh out of the clots which are formed
when the fibres are separated. And the glutinous and rich matter
which comes away from the sinews and the flesh, not only glues
the flesh to the bones, but nourishes and imparts growth to the
bone which surrounds the marrow; and by reason of the solidity of
the bones, that which filters through consists of the purest and
smoothest and oiliest sort of triangles, dropping like dew from
the bones and watering the marrow. Now when each process takes
place in this order, health commonly results; when in the
opposite order, disease. For when the flesh becomes decomposed
and sends back the wasting substance into the veins, then an
over-supply of blood of diverse kinds, mingling with air in the
veins, having variegated colours and bitter properties, as well
as acid and saline qualities, contains all sorts of bile and
serum and phlegm. For all things go the wrong way, and having
become corrupted, first they taint the blood itself, and then
ceasing to give nourishment to the body they are carried along
the veins in all directions, no longer preserving the order of
their natural courses, but at war with themselves, because they
receive no good from one another, and are hostile to the abiding
constitution of the body, which they corrupt and dissolve. The
oldest part of the flesh which is corrupted, being hard to
decompose, from long burning grows black, and from being
everywhere corroded becomes bitter, and is injurious to every
part of the body which is still uncorrupted. Sometimes, when the
bitter element is refined away, the black part assumes an acidity
which takes the place of the bitterness; at other times the
bitterness being tinged with blood has a redder colour; and this,
when mixed with black, takes the hue of grass; and again, an
auburn colour mingles with the bitter matter when new flesh is
decomposed by the fire which surrounds the internal flame;—to all
which symptoms some physician perhaps, or rather some
philosopher, who had the power of seeing in many dissimilar
things one nature deserving of a name, has assigned the common
name of bile. But the other kinds of bile are variously
distinguished by their colours. As for serum, that sort which is
the watery part of blood is innocent, but that which is a
secretion of black and acid bile is malignant when mingled by the
power of heat with any salt substance, and is then called acid
phlegm. Again, the substance which is formed by the liquefaction
of new and tender flesh when air is present, if inflated and
encased in liquid so as to form bubbles, which separately are
invisible owing to their small size, but when collected are of a
bulk which is visible, and have a white colour arising out of the
generation of foam—all this decomposition of tender flesh when
intermingled with air is termed by us white phlegm. And the whey
or sediment of newly-formed phlegm is sweat and tears, and
includes the various daily discharges by which the body is
purified. Now all these become causes of disease when the blood
is not replenished in a natural manner by food and drink but
gains bulk from opposite sources in violation of the laws of
nature. When the several parts of the flesh are separated by
disease, if the foundation remains, the power of the disorder is
only half as great, and there is still a prospect of an easy
recovery; but when that which binds the flesh to the bones is
diseased, and no longer being separated from the muscles and
sinews, ceases to give nourishment to the bone and to unite flesh
and bone, and from being oily and smooth and glutinous becomes
rough and salt and dry, owing to bad regimen, then all the
substance thus corrupted crumbles away under the flesh and the
sinews, and separates from the bone, and the fleshy parts fall
away from their foundation and leave the sinews bare and full of
brine, and the flesh again gets into the circulation of the blood
and makes the previously-mentioned disorders still greater. And
if these bodily affections be severe, still worse are the prior
disorders; as when the bone itself, by reason of the density of
the flesh, does not obtain sufficient air, but becomes mouldy and
hot and gangrened and receives no nutriment, and the natural
process is inverted, and the bone crumbling passes into the food,
and the food into the flesh, and the flesh again falling into the
blood makes all maladies that may occur more virulent than those
already mentioned. But the worst case of all is when the marrow
is diseased, either from excess or defect; and this is the cause
of the very greatest and most fatal disorders, in which the whole
course of the body is reversed.
There is a third class of diseases which may be conceived of as
arising in three ways; for they are produced sometimes by wind,
and sometimes by phlegm, and sometimes by bile. When the lung,
which is the dispenser of the air to the body, is obstructed by
rheums and its passages are not free, some of them not acting,
while through others too much air enters, then the parts which
are unrefreshed by air corrode, while in other parts the excess
of air forcing its way through the veins distorts them and
decomposing the body is enclosed in the midst of it and occupies
the midriff; thus numberless painful diseases are produced,
accompanied by copious sweats. And oftentimes when the flesh is
dissolved in the body, wind, generated within and unable to
escape, is the source of quite as much pain as the air coming in
from without; but the greatest pain is felt when the wind gets
about the sinews and the veins of the shoulders, and swells them
up, and so twists back the great tendons and the sinews which are
connected with them. These disorders are called tetanus and
opisthotonus, by reason of the tension which accompanies them.
The cure of them is difficult; relief is in most cases given by
fever supervening. The white phlegm, though dangerous when
detained within by reason of the air-bubbles, yet if it can
communicate with the outside air, is less severe, and only
discolours the body, generating leprous eruptions and similar
diseases. When it is mingled with black bile and dispersed about
the courses of the head, which are the divinest part of us, the
attack if coming on in sleep, is not so severe; but when
assailing those who are awake it is hard to be got rid of, and
being an affection of a sacred part, is most justly called
sacred. An acid and salt phlegm, again, is the source of all
those diseases which take the form of catarrh, but they have many
names because the places into which they flow are manifold.
Inflammations of the body come from burnings and inflamings, and
all of them originate in bile. When bile finds a means of
discharge, it boils up and sends forth all sorts of tumours; but
when imprisoned within, it generates many inflammatory diseases,
above all when mingled with pure blood; since it then displaces
the fibres which are scattered about in the blood and are
designed to maintain the balance of rare and dense, in order that
the blood may not be so liquefied by heat as to exude from the
pores of the body, nor again become too dense and thus find a
difficulty in circulating through the veins. The fibres are so
constituted as to maintain this balance; and if any one brings
them all together when the blood is dead and in process of
cooling, then the blood which remains becomes fluid, but if they
are left alone, they soon congeal by reason of the surrounding
cold. The fibres having this power over the blood, bile, which is
only stale blood, and which from being flesh is dissolved again
into blood, at the first influx coming in little by little, hot
and liquid, is congealed by the power of the fibres; and so
congealing and made to cool, it produces internal cold and
shuddering. When it enters with more of a flood and overcomes the
fibres by its heat, and boiling up throws them into disorder, if
it have power enough to maintain its supremacy, it penetrates the
marrow and burns up what may be termed the cables of the soul,
and sets her free; but when there is not so much of it, and the
body though wasted still holds out, the bile is itself mastered,
and is either utterly banished, or is thrust through the veins
into the lower or upper belly, and is driven out of the body like
an exile from a state in which there has been civil war; whence
arise diarrhoeas and dysenteries, and all such disorders. When
the constitution is disordered by excess of fire, continuous heat
and fever are the result; when excess of air is the cause, then
the fever is quotidian; when of water, which is a more sluggish
element than either fire or air, then the fever is a tertian;
when of earth, which is the most sluggish of the four, and is
only purged away in a four-fold period, the result is a quartan
fever, which can with difficulty be shaken off.
Such is the manner in which diseases of the body arise; the
disorders of the soul, which depend upon the body, originate as
follows. We must acknowledge disease of the mind to be a want of
intelligence; and of this there are two kinds; to wit, madness
and ignorance. In whatever state a man experiences either of
them, that state may be called disease; and excessive pains and
pleasures are justly to be regarded as the greatest diseases to
which the soul is liable. For a man who is in great joy or in
great pain, in his unreasonable eagerness to attain the one and
to avoid the other, is not able to see or to hear anything
rightly; but he is mad, and is at the time utterly incapable of
any participation in reason. He who has the seed about the spinal
marrow too plentiful and overflowing, like a tree overladen with
fruit, has many throes, and also obtains many pleasures in his
desires and their offspring, and is for the most part of his life
deranged, because his pleasures and pains are so very great; his
soul is rendered foolish and disordered by his body; yet he is
regarded not as one diseased, but as one who is voluntarily bad,
which is a mistake. The truth is that the intemperance of love is
a disease of the soul due chiefly to the moisture and fluidity
which is produced in one of the elements by the loose consistency
of the bones. And in general, all that which is termed the
incontinence of pleasure and is deemed a reproach under the idea
that the wicked voluntarily do wrong is not justly a matter for
reproach. For no man is voluntarily bad; but the bad become bad
by reason of an ill disposition of the body and bad education,
things which are hateful to every man and happen to him against
his will. And in the case of pain too in like manner the soul
suffers much evil from the body. For where the acid and briny
phlegm and other bitter and bilious humours wander about in the
body, and find no exit or escape, but are pent up within and
mingle their own vapours with the motions of the soul, and are
blended with them, they produce all sorts of diseases, more or
fewer, and in every degree of intensity; and being carried to the
three places of the soul, whichever they may severally assail,
they create infinite varieties of ill-temper and melancholy, of
rashness and cowardice, and also of forgetfulness and stupidity.
Further, when to this evil constitution of body evil forms of
government are added and evil discourses are uttered in private
as well as in public, and no sort of instruction is given in
youth to cure these evils, then all of us who are bad become bad
from two causes which are entirely beyond our control. In such
cases the planters are to blame rather than the plants, the
educators rather than the educated. But however that may be, we
should endeavour as far as we can by education, and studies, and
learning, to avoid vice and attain virtue; this, however, is part
of another subject.
There is a corresponding enquiry concerning the mode of treatment
by which the mind and the body are to be preserved, about which
it is meet and right that I should say a word in turn; for it is
more our duty to speak of the good than of the evil. Everything
that is good is fair, and the fair is not without proportion, and
the animal which is to be fair must have due proportion. Now we
perceive lesser symmetries or proportions and reason about them,
but of the highest and greatest we take no heed; for there is no
proportion or disproportion more productive of health and
disease, and virtue and vice, than that between soul and body.
This however we do not perceive, nor do we reflect that when a
weak or small frame is the vehicle of a great and mighty soul, or
conversely, when a little soul is encased in a large body, then
the whole animal is not fair, for it lacks the most important of
all symmetries; but the due proportion of mind and body is the
fairest and loveliest of all sights to him who has the seeing
eye. Just as a body which has a leg too long, or which is
unsymmetrical in some other respect, is an unpleasant sight, and
also, when doing its share of work, is much distressed and makes
convulsive efforts, and often stumbles through awkwardness, and
is the cause of infinite evil to its own self—in like manner we
should conceive of the double nature which we call the living
being; and when in this compound there is an impassioned soul
more powerful than the body, that soul, I say, convulses and
fills with disorders the whole inner nature of man; and when
eager in the pursuit of some sort of learning or study, causes
wasting; or again, when teaching or disputing in private or in
public, and strifes and controversies arise, inflames and
dissolves the composite frame of man and introduces rheums; and
the nature of this phenomenon is not understood by most
professors of medicine, who ascribe it to the opposite of the
real cause. And once more, when a body large and too strong for
the soul is united to a small and weak intelligence, then
inasmuch as there are two desires natural to man,—one of food for
the sake of the body, and one of wisdom for the sake of the
diviner part of us—then, I say, the motions of the stronger,
getting the better and increasing their own power, but making the
soul dull, and stupid, and forgetful, engender ignorance, which
is the greatest of diseases. There is one protection against both
kinds of disproportion:—that we should not move the body without
the soul or the soul without the body, and thus they will be on
their guard against each other, and be healthy and well balanced.
And therefore the mathematician or any one else whose thoughts
are much absorbed in some intellectual pursuit, must allow his
body also to have due exercise, and practise gymnastic; and he
who is careful to fashion the body, should in turn impart to the
soul its proper motions, and should cultivate music and all
philosophy, if he would deserve to be called truly fair and truly
good. And the separate parts should be treated in the same
manner, in imitation of the pattern of the universe; for as the
body is heated and also cooled within by the elements which enter
into it, and is again dried up and moistened by external things,
and experiences these and the like affections from both kinds of
motions, the result is that the body if given up to motion when
in a state of quiescence is overmastered and perishes; but if any
one, in imitation of that which we call the foster-mother and
nurse of the universe, will not allow the body ever to be
inactive, but is always producing motions and agitations through
its whole extent, which form the natural defence against other
motions both internal and external, and by moderate exercise
reduces to order according to their affinities the particles and
affections which are wandering about the body, as we have already
said when speaking of the universe, he will not allow enemy
placed by the side of enemy to stir up wars and disorders in the
body, but he will place friend by the side of friend, so as to
create health. Now of all motions that is the best which is
produced in a thing by itself, for it is most akin to the motion
of thought and of the universe; but that motion which is caused
by others is not so good, and worst of all is that which moves
the body, when at rest, in parts only and by some external
agency. Wherefore of all modes of purifying and re-uniting the
body the best is gymnastic; the next best is a surging motion, as
in sailing or any other mode of conveyance which is not
fatiguing; the third sort of motion may be of use in a case of
extreme necessity, but in any other will be adopted by no man of
sense: I mean the purgative treatment of physicians; for diseases
unless they are very dangerous should not be irritated by
medicines, since every form of disease is in a manner akin to the
living being, whose complex frame has an appointed term of life.
For not the whole race only, but each individual—barring
inevitable accidents—comes into the world having a fixed span,
and the triangles in us are originally framed with power to last
for a certain time, beyond which no man can prolong his life. And
this holds also of the constitution of diseases; if any one
regardless of the appointed time tries to subdue them by
medicine, he only aggravates and multiplies them. Wherefore we
ought always to manage them by regimen, as far as a man can spare
the time, and not provoke a disagreeable enemy by medicines.
Enough of the composite animal, and of the body which is a part
of him, and of the manner in which a man may train and be trained
by himself so as to live most according to reason: and we must
above and before all provide that the element which is to train
him shall be the fairest and best adapted to that purpose. A
minute discussion of this subject would be a serious task; but
if, as before, I am to give only an outline, the subject may not
unfitly be summed up as follows.
I have often remarked that there are three kinds of soul located
within us, having each of them motions, and I must now repeat in
the fewest words possible, that one part, if remaining inactive
and ceasing from its natural motion, must necessarily become very
weak, but that which is trained and exercised, very strong.
Wherefore we should take care that the movements of the different
parts of the soul should be in due proportion.
And we should consider that God gave the sovereign part of the
human soul to be the divinity of each one, being that part which,
as we say, dwells at the top of the body, and inasmuch as we are
a plant not of an earthly but of a heavenly growth, raises us
from earth to our kindred who are in heaven. And in this we say
truly; for the divine power suspended the head and root of us
from that place where the generation of the soul first began, and
thus made the whole body upright. When a man is always occupied
with the cravings of desire and ambition, and is eagerly striving
to satisfy them, all his thoughts must be mortal, and, as far as
it is possible altogether to become such, he must be mortal every
whit, because he has cherished his mortal part. But he who has
been earnest in the love of knowledge and of true wisdom, and has
exercised his intellect more than any other part of him, must
have thoughts immortal and divine, if he attain truth, and in so
far as human nature is capable of sharing in immortality, he must
altogether be immortal; and since he is ever cherishing the
divine power, and has the divinity within him in perfect order,
he will be perfectly happy. Now there is only one way of taking
care of things, and this is to give to each the food and motion
which are natural to it. And the motions which are naturally akin
to the divine principle within us are the thoughts and
revolutions of the universe. These each man should follow, and
correct the courses of the head which were corrupted at our
birth, and by learning the harmonies and revolutions of the
universe, should assimilate the thinking being to the thought,
renewing his original nature, and having assimilated them should
attain to that perfect life which the gods have set before
mankind, both for the present and the future.
Thus our original design of discoursing about the universe down
to the creation of man is nearly completed. A brief mention may
be made of the generation of other animals, so far as the subject
admits of brevity; in this manner our argument will best attain a
due proportion. On the subject of animals, then, the following
remarks may be offered. Of the men who came into the world, those
who were cowards or led unrighteous lives may with reason be
supposed to have changed into the nature of women in the second
generation. And this was the reason why at that time the gods
created in us the desire of sexual intercourse, contriving in man
one animated substance, and in woman another, which they formed
respectively in the following manner. The outlet for drink by
which liquids pass through the lung under the kidneys and into
the bladder, which receives and then by the pressure of the air
emits them, was so fashioned by them as to penetrate also into
the body of the marrow, which passes from the head along the neck
and through the back, and which in the preceding discourse we
have named the seed. And the seed having life, and becoming
endowed with respiration, produces in that part in which it
respires a lively desire of emission, and thus creates in us the
love of procreation. Wherefore also in men the organ of
generation becoming rebellious and masterful, like an animal
disobedient to reason, and maddened with the sting of lust, seeks
to gain absolute sway; and the same is the case with the
so-called womb or matrix of women; the animal within them is
desirous of procreating children, and when remaining unfruitful
long beyond its proper time, gets discontented and angry, and
wandering in every direction through the body, closes up the
passages of the breath, and, by obstructing respiration, drives
them to extremity, causing all varieties of disease, until at
length the desire and love of the man and the woman, bringing
them together and as it were plucking the fruit from the tree,
sow in the womb, as in a field, animals unseen by reason of their
smallness and without form; these again are separated and matured
within; they are then finally brought out into the light, and
thus the generation of animals is completed.
Thus were created women and the female sex in general. But the
race of birds was created out of innocent light-minded men, who,
although their minds were directed toward heaven, imagined, in
their simplicity, that the clearest demonstration of the things
above was to be obtained by sight; these were remodelled and
transformed into birds, and they grew feathers instead of hair.
The race of wild pedestrian animals, again, came from those who
had no philosophy in any of their thoughts, and never considered
at all about the nature of the heavens, because they had ceased
to use the courses of the head, but followed the guidance of
those parts of the soul which are in the breast. In consequence
of these habits of theirs they had their front-legs and their
heads resting upon the earth to which they were drawn by natural
affinity; and the crowns of their heads were elongated and of all
sorts of shapes, into which the courses of the soul were crushed
by reason of disuse. And this was the reason why they were
created quadrupeds and polypods: God gave the more senseless of
them the more support that they might be more attracted to the
earth. And the most foolish of them, who trail their bodies
entirely upon the ground and have no longer any need of feet, he
made without feet to crawl upon the earth. The fourth class were
the inhabitants of the water: these were made out of the most
entirely senseless and ignorant of all, whom the transformers did
not think any longer worthy of pure respiration, because they
possessed a soul which was made impure by all sorts of
transgression; and instead of the subtle and pure medium of air,
they gave them the deep and muddy sea to be their element of
respiration; and hence arose the race of fishes and oysters, and
other aquatic animals, which have received the most remote
habitations as a punishment of their outlandish ignorance. These
are the laws by which animals pass into one another, now, as
ever, changing as they lose or gain wisdom and folly.
We may now say that our discourse about the nature of the
universe has an end. The world has received animals, mortal and
immortal, and is fulfilled with them, and has become a visible
animal containing the visible—the sensible God who is the image
of the intellectual, the greatest, best, fairest, most
perfect—the one only-begotten heaven.
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