Section 8, Part 2 of the Introduction to Tamaeus. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Patty Cunningham. Tamaeus by Plato. Translated by Benjamin Joett. Introduction and Analysis. Section 8, Part 2. A further study of the Tamaeus suggests some afterthoughts which may be conveniently brought together in this place. The topics which I propose briefly to reconsider are A. The relation of the Tamaeus to the other dialogues of Plato and to the previous philosophy. B. The nature of God and of creation. C. The morality of the Tamaeus. A. The Tamaeus 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 Tamaeus, a Pythagorean philosopher, and therefore here, as in the Parmenides, we are in doubt how far Plato is expressing his own sentiments. Hence the connection with the other dialogues is comparatively slight. We may fill up the lacunae of the Tamaeus by the help of the Republic or Phaedrus. We may identify the same another with the Paras and a Pyran of the Philebus. We may find in the laws or in the statesmen 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 is 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 endeavor 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 recognized the marks both of benevolence and of design in the frame of man and in the world. The apparatus of winds and water 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, 97, F, F, compare Aristotle metaphysics I, 4, 5. 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, and 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 periosis of the one philosopher answers to the circular movement perichoresis 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 distance of the planets reappear in the Timaeus. It is probable that among the Pythagoreans living in the 4th century BC 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 anesthesis of the Timaeus may also be compared with his porat. The passage of one element into another is common to Heraclitus and several of the Ionian philosophers, so much of a synchronous 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 Ioletic 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 Iletics, 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. 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 the Parmenides, the Aetetus 183e. There is a similarity between the Timaeus and the fragments of Phalalus, which by some has been thought to be so great as to create a suspicion that they are derived from it. Phalalus is known to us from the Phaedo of Plato as a Pythagorean philosopher residing at Thebes in the latter half of the 5th century BC, after the dispersion of the original Pythagorean society. He was the teacher of Simeus and Sebes, 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 Phalalus, there can be no doubt. Fragments of this work are preserved to us, chiefly in Stoibaeus, a few in both Eus and other writers. They remind us of the Timaeus as well as of the Phaedrus and the Phalabus. When the writer says, Stoibaeus, Eccl. I, 22, 7, 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 Phalabus, 23, f, f. When he calls the center of the world Hestia, we have a parallel to the Phadrus, 247a. 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, approximate to Plato's fear of the same and of the other, like Plato, Timaeus 62c, f, f. He denied the above and below in space, and said that all things were the same in relation to a center. He speaks also of the world as one and indestructible, for neither from within nor from without does it admit of destruction, compared to Maes 33. He mentions ten heavenly bodies including the sun and moon, the earth and the counter-earth, and tichthon, 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 center of his system. Philolos magnifies the virtues of particular numbers, especially the number ten. Stobeus, Ecclige, I, 2, 3, and descents 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 Philolos and Plato agree in making the world move in certain numerical ratios according to a musical scale, though Boch is of opinion that the two scales of Philolos 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 favor of the geniuses of the fragments with Boch and Zeller, or with Valentine Rose and Schar-Schmidt 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 of both 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 most opposed and unlike. The opposition is presented to us in many forms as the antithesis of the one and the 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 connection 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 predicted 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 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 eminent 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 6 754 C 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 compare Sophist 243b 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 Heraclitus but at times the old elitic 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 presentment 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 Magarians 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 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 compare Republic to 99a laws 10 901 2 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 insofar as his works with his eye fixed upon an eternal pattern he is like the human artificer in the Republic 6 501 b 10 597 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 Timaeus 42e as in the statesman 272e 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 hauntings 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 899 900 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 that 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 afterlife 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 54b 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 which occurred at page 408 for there 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 86 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 insofar 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 airing 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 are conveyed to the bodily organs but this perhaps to use once more expressions of his own is part of another subject 87b or maybe more suitably discussed on some other occasion 38b 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 of the ignorance of anatomy displayed by the author in showing the fancifulness or unmeaningless 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 compared Aewald history of Israel volume 5 which perhaps originated in a few verses of 2nd Estrus c.13 it has become famous because it has coincided with a great historical fact like the romance of King Arthur which has 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 15th and 16th centuries it foreshadowed the discovery of America it realized the fiction so natural to the human mind because it answered the inquiry about the origin of the arts that there had somewhere existed an ancient primitive civilization it might find a place wherever men choose to look for it in North, South, East or West in the Islands of the Blessed 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 Longinas 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 Neoplatonist loyal to their master like some commentators on the Christian scriptures sought to give an allegorical meaning to what they also believe to be an historical fact it was as if someone 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 Moore and the new Atlantis of Bacon although probably neither of these great men were at all imposed upon by the fiction it was most prolific in the 17th or in the early part of the 18th century when the human mind seeking for utopias or inventing them was glad to escape out of the dullness of the present into the romance of the past or some ideal of the future the later forms of such narratives contain features taken from the Eda as well as from the Old and New Testament also from the tales of missionaries and the experiences of travelers and of colonists the various opinions respecting the island of Atlantis have no interest for us except insofar as they illustrate the extravagances of which men are capable but this is a real interest and a serious lesson if we remember 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 one did Plato derive the legend of Atlantis from an Egyptian source it may be replied that there is no such legend in any writer than the previous to Plato neither in Homer nor in Pindar nor in Herodotus is there any mention of an island of Atlantis nor in 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 connection between Greece and Egypt older than the 8th or 9th century BC it is true that Proclus writing in the 5th 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 Procopius 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 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 Cranthor 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 Phadras 275b 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 when the confidence of the reader who would desire better evidence than that of Cretias who had heard the narrative in youth when the memory is strongest 26b at the age of ten from his grandfather Cretias an old man of ninety who in turn had heard it from Solon himself is not the famous expression you Hellenies are ever children and there is no knowledge among you Horry 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 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 the 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 volume 3 page 295 but our probabilities for which there is not a title 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 irredition 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 the 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 connection 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 Lucunae 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 1812 he also refers to the Timaeus which speaking in the person of Eleus the Epicurean he severely criticizes the commentary of Proclus of Felf C 440 AD on the Timaeus is a wonderful monument of the silliness and prolixity of the Alexandrian age it extends to about 30 pages of the book and is 30 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 Neoplatonist after the fashion not of the 5th or 16th but of the 19th century AD 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 the words in their simple meaning or sentences in their natural connection 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 and platinus of misapplied logic of misunderstood grammar 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 discolored 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 Tamaeus a very different account must be given of the short work entitled Tamaeus Locris which is a brief but clear analysis of the Tamaeus of Plato omitting the introduction or dialogue of all editions it does not allude to the original from which it is taken it is quite free from mysticism and neoplatonism in length it does not exceed a fifth part of the Tamaeus 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 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 Tamaeus from the garden of the Tamaeus 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 oh 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 phonanta senesto isi a word to the wise 40 D F F 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 they are speaking of what took place in their own family we must conform to custom and believe them 76 E our creators well knew that women and other animals and they further knew that many animals would require the use of nails for many purposes where for 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 37 A F F 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 a mutable being and when reason which works with equal truth whether she be in the circle of the diverse or 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 outer world mutually to imply each other and 47 B God invented and gave a 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 that we learning them and partaking of the natural truth of reason might imitate the absolutely unerring courses of God and regulate our own vagarities or let us weigh carefully some other profound thoughts such as the following 44 C he who neglects education walks lame to the end of his life and returns imperfect and good for nothing to the world below 48 C 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 or lastly 29 D 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 end of section 8 end of introduction and analysis recording by Paddy Cunningham Part 1 of Timaeus this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Timaeus by Plato translated by Benjamin Joatt Part 1 Persons of the Dialogue Socrates read by Rosalind Wills read by Anna Simon Cretius read by Michael Evans Champagne Illinois Hermocrates read by Leon Meyer One, two, three but where my dear Timaeus is the fourth of those who were yesterday my guests and are to be my entertainers today. He has been taken ill Socrates for he would not willingly have been absent from this gathering. Then if he is not coming you and the two others must supply a place. 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. Do you remember what were the points of which I required you to speak? 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. 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 the most perfect. Yes Socrates and what you said of it was very much to our mind. Did we not begin by separating the husbandmen and the artisans from the class of defenders of the state? Yes. And when we had given to each one that single employment and particular art 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. Exactly. We said if I am not mistaken that the guardian should be gifted with a temperament in a high degree both passionate and philosophical and that then they ought to be gentle to their friends and fierce with their enemies. Certainly. 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? Very true. 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 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. That was also said. Neither did we forget the women of whom we declared that their nature should be assimilated and brought into harmony with those of the men and that common pursuit should be assigned to them both in time of war and in their ordinary life. That again was as you say. 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. Yes and the proposal is easy to remember as you say. And do you also remember how with a view of securing as far as we could the best way 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 quarreling on this account for they would imagine that the union was a mere accident and was to be attributed to the lot. I remember. 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 growing up the rulers were to be on the lookout 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. True. Then have I now given you all the heads of our yesterday's discussion or is there anything more, my dear Timmyus, which has been omitted? Nothing, Socrates. It was just as you've said. I should like before proceeding further to tell you how I feel about the state which we have described. 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 someone tell of our own city carrying on a struggle against her neighbors and how she went out to war in a becoming manner and when at war shewed by the greatness of her actions and the magnanimity of her actions and the greatness of her actions and the greatness of her actions and the greatness of her actions and the greatness of her actions and the greatness of her actions and the magnanimity of her words in dealing with other cities as 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 everyone can see that they are a tribe of imitators and will imitate best 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 parlay 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 Timmius 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 Critius whom every Athenian knows to be no novice in the matter 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 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 today 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. And we too Socrates as Timmius says will not be wanting an enthusiasm and there is no excuse for not complying with your request. As soon as we arrived yesterday at the guest chamber of Cretius 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 Cretius that you would repeat to Socrates so that he may help us to judge whether it will satisfy his requirements or not. I will if Timmius who is our other partner approves. I quite approve. 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 Draupides as he himself says in many passages of his poems and he told the story to Cretius my grandfather who remembered and repeated it to us. There were of old he said great and marvelous 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 the hymn of praise true and worthy of the goddess on this her day of festival. Very good and what is this ancient famous action of the Athenians which Cretius declared on the authority of Solon to be not a mere legend but an actual fact. I will tell an old world story which I heard from an aged man for Cretius at the time of telling it was as he said nearly 90 years of age and I was about 10. 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 to please Cretius 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 Aminander 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 or any poet and what was the tale about Cretius said Aminander 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 Nile river 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 Nath 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 honor he asked the priest who were most skillful 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 Faronius who is called the first man and about Nairobi and after the deluge of the survival of Duke Calian 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 there upon one of the priests who was of a very great age said oh 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 meant 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 horny 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 Pathan 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 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 we 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 on yourselves as for those genealogies of yours of which you just now recounted to us so long 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 they're formally 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 before the great deluge of all when the city which is now Athens was first in war and in every way the best govern 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 marveled at his words and earnestly requested the priests to affirm him exactly and in order about these former citizens you are welcome to hear about them Solon said the priest for both 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 observed that Plato gives the same date 9000 years ago for the foundation of Athens and for the repulsive the invasion from Atlantis 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 hear after 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 castes 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 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 needed 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 where for 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 like as to herself and there you dwelt having such laws as these and still better ones and excelled all mankind in all virtue and in disciples of the gods many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state and our histories but one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness and valor 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 called the Pillars of Heracles the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together and was the way to the 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 harbor 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 ruled 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 Tyrania this vast power gathered into one endeavored to subdue at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the region within the straits and then so in your country shown forth in the excellence of her virtue and strength among all mankind she was preeminent 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 in 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 it elapsed and I had forgotten too much I thought that I might 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 therefore as Hermocrates has told you on my way home yesterday I 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 to 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 who 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 priests 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 endeavor 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 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 to you Socrates the order in which we have arranged our entertainment our intention is that Timaeus who is the most of an astronomer among 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 thence forward we will speak of them as Athenians and fellow citizens 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 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 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 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 will 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 inquiry about anything was the world I say always in existence and headed at 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 if we found him to tell 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 everyone 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 meaning 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 inmovable nothing less but when they express only the copy or likeness not the eternal things themselves they need only be likely and analogous to the real words as being is to be coming so is truth to believe if then Socrates omit the many opinions about the gods and the generation of the universe we are not able to give notions which are all together 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 inquire no further excellent Timeus 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 end of part one part two of Timeus this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Anna Simon Timeus by Plato translated by Benjamin Joed part two Timeus, 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 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 man 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 in broad 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 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 kindered 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 there must 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 and 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 affect 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 death 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 the four 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 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 and tire 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 lath having its extremes in every direction equidistant from the center 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 it already digested since there was nothing which went from him or came into him for there was nothing beside him and 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 anyone 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 it was to be to whom for this reason he gave a body smooth and even having a surface in every direction equidistant from the center a body entire and perfect and formed out of perfect bodies and in the center 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 on 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 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 he 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 one and then he separated a second part which was double the first two 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 three and then he took a fourth part which was twice as much as the second four and a fifth part which was three times the third nine and a sixth part which was eight times the first eight and a seventh part which was twenty seven times the first twenty seven after this he filled up the double intervals that is between one two four and eight the triple that is between one three nine twenty seven 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 one four thirds two in which the mean four thirds is one third of one more than one and one third of two less than two the other being that kind of mean which exceeds and exceeded by an equal number where there were intervals of three halves and of four thirds and of nine eighths made by the connecting terms in the former intervals he filled up all the intervals of four thirds with the interval of nine eighths leaving a fraction over and the interval which this fraction expressed was in a ratio of 256 to 243 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 their original meeting point and comprehending them in a uniform revolution upon the same axis he made the one the outer 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 that is of the rectangular figure supposed to be inscribed in the circle of the same to the right and the motion of the diverse diagonally that is across the rectangular figure from corner to corner to the left had 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 made 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 center to center the soul interfused everywhere from the center to the circumference of heaven of which also she is the external envelopment herself turning in herself to the divine beginning of never seizing 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 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 unwarded cause 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 of the same moving smoothly declares it then intelligence and knowledge are necessarily perfected and if anyone 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 fullness upon a creature was impossible where for 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 thereafter 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 nonexistent is nonexistent 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 siftness 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 signed 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 learned 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 a lesser orbit revolving faster and those which had a larger more slowly now by reason of the motion of the same those which revolved fastest appear 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 they proceeded most slowly from the sphere of the same which was the swiftest appear 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 revolution of the same and alike 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 with 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 fulfills 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 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 a likeness of the original but in as much as all animals were not yet comprehended therein 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 a 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 continued 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 evolutions 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 them 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 end of part 2 part 3 of Timaeus this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Anna Simon Timaeus by Plato translated by Benjamin Joett part 3 Timaeus continues to know or tell the origin of the other divinities is beyond us and we must accept those traditions of the man of all 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 Tithis were the children of earth and heaven and from these sprang forces and Kronos and Rhea and all that generation and from Kronos and Rhea sprang Zeus and Heere and all those who are said to be their brethren and others who are 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 who 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 you are but creatures you are not altogether immortal and indissoluble but you 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 you are 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 the universe may be truly universal do ye according to your natures but take 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 there 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 chained 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 aggressions 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 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 yet 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 over the solid earth or the gliding waters or was caught in the tempest born 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 the 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 that is between 1, 2, 4, 8 and the three triple intervals that is between 1, 3, 9, 27 together with the mean terms and connecting links which are expressed by the ratios of 2 and 4 to 3 and of 9 to 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 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 truth and they become false and foolish and there is no cause 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 and the causes 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 causes 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 the 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 fullness and health of that 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 inquiry into the generation of the body and its members and as to how the soul was created for what reason and by what providence the gods and holding fast to probability we must pursue our way first then the gods imitating the spherical shape of the universe and close the two divine causes 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 each vehicle a means of locomotion which consequently had length and was furnished with four limbs extended and flexible these gods 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 honorable and more fit to command than the hinder part made us to move mostly in a forward direction therefore man must needs have his front part unlike and distinguished from the rest of his body and so in the vessel of the head first of all put a face in which they inserted organs to minister in all things to the provenance 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 everyday life which is within us and related there to 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 a line of vision wherever the light that falls from within the 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 with a longer of one nature with a 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 but where the greater motions still remain of whatever nature and whatever locality the 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 services 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 service 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 service repels the right stream of vision to the left side and the left to the right 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 cooperative 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 heath 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 cooperative 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 inquiring about the nature of the universe and from this source we have derived philosophy then which no greater good ever was or will be given by the God 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 where to it most contributes moreover so much of music as is adapted to the sound of the voice and 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 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 end of part 3