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Plato’s Cosmology
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front ispia e
PLATO’S COSMOLOGY
The Timaeus of Plato translated with a running commentary
By
FRANCIS MACDONALD CORNFORD
Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy and Fellow of Trinity College in the University of Cambridge
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. LTD. NEW YORK: HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
1937
Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London
TO
ELEANOR MEREDITH
COBHAM
rj tclOtcI re ao<f> rj icrrt kcll <xAAa rroXXa.
PREFACE
This book is constructed on the same plan as an earlier volume in the series, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge. It contains a translation of the Timaeus interspersed with a commentary discussing each problem of interpretation — and there are many hitherto unsolved — as it arises. My first aim has been to render Plato's words as closely as I can. Anyone who attempts to reproduce his exalted poetical style must face the certainty of failure, with the added risk of falsifying the sense, especially by misleading reminiscences of the English Bible. The commentary is designed to guide the reader through a long and intricate argument and to explain what must remain obscure in the most faithful translation ; for the Timaeus covers an immense field at the cost of compressing the thought into the smallest space. Only with some such aid can students of theology and philosophy have access to a document which has deeply influenced mediaeval and modem speculation. I have tried not to confuse the interpretation of the text with the construction of theories of wider scope. The later Platonism is a subject on which agreement may never be reached ; but there is some hope of persuading scholars that a Greek sentence means one thing rather than another.
The translation follows Burnet's text, except where I have given reasons for departing from it or proposed corrections of passages that are probably or certainly corrupt. For the interpretation I have consulted, in the first instance, the commentaries of Proclus and Chalcidius, the fragment of Galen's commentary lately re-edited by Schroder, the relevant treatises of Plutarch, and Theon of Smyrna, who preserves valuable extracts from Dercylides and Adrastus. The careful summary of the Timaeus in the Didascalicus of the Middle Platonist Albinus deserves more attention than it receives. Among the modems I have drawn freely upon Martin's admirable Etudes sur le Timee de Platon , Archer-Hind's com- mentary, and the translations of Apelt, Fraccaroli, Rivaud, and Professor A. E. Taylor.1
More useful than any of these has been Professor Taylor's
1 I regret that I did not learn that Mr. R. G. Bury’s translation had appeared untU it was too late to make use of it.
vii
PREFACE
Commentary. His wide learning and untiring industry have amassed a great quantity of illustrative material, and he has cleared up the meaning of many sentences hitherto misunderstood. These amendments will pass into the common stock of future editors and translators, and I have for the most part adopted them tacitly. It is unfortunate that I should so often have had to quote his views where it was necessary to give reasons for dissent. My notes, accordingly, do not indicate the extent of a debt which I here acknowledge with gratitude.
On many of the larger questions of interpretation, however, I differ widely from Professor Taylor. He has launched in this volume a new Taylorian heresy. After confounding the persons of Socrates and Plato in earlier books, he has now divided the substance of Plato and Timaeus. All the ancient Platonists from Aristotle to Simplicius and all mediaeval and modem scholars to our own day have assumed that this dialogue contains the mature doctrine of its author. Professor Taylor holds that they have been mistaken. He writes :
‘ It is in fact the main thesis of the present interpretation that the teaching of Timaeus can be shown to be in detail exactly what we should expect in a fifth-century Italian Pythagorean who was also a medical man, that it is, in fact, a deliberate attempt to amalgamate Pythagorean religion and mathematics with Empedoclean biology, and thus correctly represents the same tendency in fifth-century thought for which the name, e.g. of Philolaus stands in the history of philosophy. If this view is sound, it follows that it is a mistake to look in the Timaeus for any revelation of the distinctively Platonic doctrines, the Idia IJAdtcovog as Aristotle calls them (Met. A. 987a, 31), by which Platonism is discriminated from Pythagoreanism, or for a 4 later Platonic theory * which can be set in opposition to the type of doctrine expounded in the Phaedo. I shall set myself in com- menting on the relevant passages to argue in detail that we do not, in fact, find any of the doctrines Aristotle thought distinctive of Plato taught in the Timaeus or in any other dialogue. But, on the other hand, what the Timaeus loses, if my view is a sound one, as an exposition of Platonism it gains as a source of light on fifth-century Pythagoreanism. If I am interpreting it on right lines, it is incomparably the most important document we possess for the history of early Greek scientific thought.*
Further on, Professor Taylor describes Plato's plan in more detail. ‘ The formula for the physics and physiology of the dialogue is that it is an attempt to graft Empedoclean biology on the stock
viii
PREFACE
of Pythagorean mathematics ' (p. 18). This fusion, he adds, could not be completely carried out. There were incongruities which lead Timaeus * into a variety of real inconsistencies which culminate in an absolutely unqualified contradiction between a medical or physiological " determinism ” (Tim, 86B-87B) and a religious and ethical doctrine of human “ freedom ” \ which is undoubtedly Pythagorean.
‘ Plato repeatedly warns us in this very dialogue that cosmology and physical science in general can never be more than “ pro- visional It is at best made up of tales “ like the truth ”. Hence Plato was not likely to feel himself responsible for the details of any of his speaker’s theories. All that is required by his own principles is that they shall be more or less “ like ” the truth, i.e. that they shall be the best approximations to it which could be expected from a geometer-biologist of the fifth century. In other words, we are entitled to say that Plato thought the view which arose from the fusion of Pythagoras with Empedocles the most promising line in fifth-century science and the one most directly connected with his own developments. It does not follow that any theory propounded by Timaeus would have been accepted by Plato as it stands. The way in which Timaeus is made at each chief new step in his narrative to insist on the highly provisional character of his speculations is a most signi- ficant feature of the dialogue, to which no one as yet seems to have done full justice. What Plato himself really thought about a good deal of Empedocles has to be learned not from our dialogue but from Laws x, where Empedocles more than anyone else is plainly aimed at in the exposure of the defects of “ naturalism ” ’ (pP. 18-19).
According to this theory, then, Plato, having occasion to give an account of the nature of the visible world, concocted an amalgam of two philosophies belonging to the previous century, although he knew them to be incompatible and largely disapproved of one of them. All he wanted was something ‘ like the truth What he actually produced was not a picture that he himself could accept as more like the truth than any other, but the best that could be expected from an imaginary eclectic, of two or three generations earlier, attempting to combine irreconcilables.
I cannot think that this theory will be accepted. The improb- ability is so great that overwhelming proof must be required. The evidence, if it existed, could hardly have been overlooked by all those ancient authorities whose knowledge of Platonism and its antecedents was far greater than any we can ever hope to possess.
ix
PREFACE
Professor Taylor rightly insists that the student should know what the men who had heard Plato's doctrines from his own lips or from his immediate disciples supposed him to mean ; and how he was understood by men of real learning like Posidonius, Plutarch, and Atticus, and even later by men versed in the earlier literature like Plotinus and Proclus. The chief value of his own commentary lies in the exhaustive summaries of these ancient opinions. But if his theory is sound, how is it that not one of them furnishes a single unambiguous statement to the effect that the doctrines of the Titnaeus are not Plato's own ? Aristotle was living and working with Plato when the dialogue was written. Why does he never use the Timaeus as ' a source of light on fifth-century Pytha- goreanism * or refer to it as ‘ a document for the history of early Greek scientific thought ', a subject in which he was much interested ? How is it that Theophrastus (as Professor Taylor remarks, p. i) ‘ treats the whole account of the sensible qualities given in our dialogue as the views of Plato ', without a hint that they are really no more than the best that could be expected from a geometer-biologist of the previous century ? From all that we know of Theophrastus' History of Physical Opinions it is clear that he used the Timaeus as his main source for Plato's physical doctrine. Aristotle and Theophrastus must have known the true character of the work. Both wrote at length on the history of philosophy. Neither left on record so much as a suspicion that Plato was really fabricating a medley of obsolete theories for which he acknowledged no responsibility. Had such a suspicion been expressed in any of their works now lost to us, it could not have escaped the notice of the later ancient commentators, who studied the Timaeus line by line and sought for light upon its meaning in every available quarter. The discovery would then have robbed the dialogue of all authority. Not only would it have lost its value as an expression of Plato’s mind, but to the ancients it would have been useless as a record of fifth-century speculation. Possess- ing the original documents on which it was based, they would have contemplated with more amazement than interest the ingenuity spent in conjuring out of them an incoherent system which nobody had ever held.
It is hard to understand how anyone acquainted with the litera- ture and art of the classical period can imagine that the greatest philosopher of that period, at the height of his powers, could have wasted his time on so frivolous and futile an exercise in pastiche. What could have been his motive ? Nowhere, in all his seven hundred pages, has Professor Taylor really faced this question ; yet it surely calls for an answer. When an archaeologist unearths
PREFACE
a temple in a sixth-century style of architecture, it never occurs to him to doubt whether the sculpture may not be the work of Praxiteles or Scopas, deliberately faking an archaic manner. He knows that such things were not done till the blaze of creative genius had died down ; the foundations of Wardour Street were laid in Alexandria. Yet such a supposition would be every whit as probable as Professor Taylor's thesis.
The reader who does not accept that thesis will find himself somewhat bewildered by attempts to prove that Timaeus says one thing while Plato believes another. There are two other tendencies, running through the whole commentary, which seem to me to distort the picture. One is the suggestion that Plato (or Timaeus ?) is at heart a monotheist and not far from being a Christian.1 The Demiurge is not fully recognised as a mythical figure, but credited with attributes belonging to the Creator of Genesis or even to the God of the New Testament. Another is the practice of translating Plato's words into the terms of Professor Whitehead's philosophy. That philosophy could not have existed before the Theory of Relativity ; and its author, having very unfamiliar ideas to express, uses common words in senses so peculiar and esoteric that no one can follow him without a glossary. Consider the following defini- tions of an ‘ occasion ' and an ‘ event ' :
f Each monadic creature is a mode of the process of " feeling " the world, of housing the world in one unit of complex feeling, in every way determinate. Such a unit is an “ actual occasion " ; it is the ultimate creature derivative from the creative process. The term “ event " is used in a more general sense. An event is a nexus of actual occasions inter-related in some determinate fashion in some extensive quantum : it is either a nexus in its formal completeness, or it is an objectified nexus. One actual occasion is a limiting type of event. The most general sense of the meaning of change is “ the differences between actual occasions in one event For example, a molecule is a his- toric route of actual occasions ; and such a route is an “ event ". Now the motion of the molecule is nothing else than the dif- ferences between the successive occasions of its life-history in respect to the extensive quanta from which they arise ; and the changes in the molecule are the consequential differences in the actual occasions ' ( Process and Reality , pp. m-12).
It is true that Professor Whitehead has been profoundly influenced hy Jowett's translation, and that his eternal objects have a definite affinity to Plato’s eternal Forms. But there is more of Plato in the 1 Examples will be found in the notes on 29D-30C and 69c, 3.
xi
PREFACE
Adventures of Ideas than there is of Whitehead in the Timaeus. The modem reader is likely to be misled by the constant use of Whitehead's ' event ' as equivalent to Plato's yiyvofievov. More- over, Plato expressly declares that his Forms ‘ never enter into anything else anywhere ' (52A) — a cardinal point of difference between himself and Aristotle. Yet Professor Taylor writes : ‘ydveoig ... is, in fact, the “ ingredience of objects into events ", by which the “ passage " of nature is constituted. . . . The famous Forms ... are what Whitehead calls “ objects ", and the point of insistence upon their reality is that Nature is not made up of the mere succession of events, that the passage of nature is a process of “ ingredience " of objects into events ' (p. 131). Accord- ing to Professor Taylor's main thesis, the philosophy of our dialogue belongs to a period which already seemed archaic to Aristotle : he regularly speaks of the fifth-century thinkers as ‘ the primitives ' (ol dgxaioi). Even if we restore this philosophy to Plato, it cannot usefully be paraphrased in terms which have first acquired their technical meaning in our own life-time. It is puzzling to find the contents of Timaeus' discourse represented at one moment as more antique than Plato and at the next as more modern (and consider- ably more Christian) than Herbert Spencer. Accordingly, while every student must acknowledge a great debt to Professor Taylor's researches, there is still room for a commentary based on the traditional assumptions and attempting to illustrate Plato's thought in the historical setting of Plato's century.
Friends and colleagues have generously helped me with their advice on matters in which I needed a judgment more competent than my own. Sir Thomas Heath, whose masterly works on Greek mathematics I have constantly consulted and never in vain, has written long and careful answers to my inquiries. Professor Onians has allowed me to use freely the proofs of his valuable book. The Origins of Greek and Roman Thought. I am also specially indebted to Dr. W. H. S. Jones, Professor D. S. Robertson, Mr. R. P. Winnington-Ingram, and Mr. R. Hackforth. The late Professor H. S. Foxwell kindly gave me permission to reproduce the photo- graph of the Armillary Sphere in his possession. Dr. R. T. Gunther tells me its probable date is about 1780-1820. In 1790 C. F. Delamarche published Les usages de la Sphere et des Globes celeste et terrestre , selon les hypotheses de Ptolemee et de Copernic, accompagnees de figures analogues .
Cambridge
1937
xu
F. M. C.
A.-H.
Albinus
Apelt
Chalcidius
Fraccaroli
Pr.
Rivaud
Theon
Tr.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
= Archer-Hind, R.D. The Timaeus of Plato, London, 1888.
= *Ahav6ov (sic) didaaxahixdg rcbv IIMtcdvoq doy/idvcov, ed. Hermann, Platonis Dialogi, Lipsiae, 1892, vi, pp. 152 ff.
= Platon’s Dialoge Timaios und Kritias ubersetzt und erlautert von O. Apelt, Leipzig, 1922.
= Platonis Timaeus interprete Chalcidio cum eiusdem com- mentario, ed. J. Wrobel, Lipsiae, mdccclxxvi.
= II Timeo trad, da Giuseppe Fraccaroli, Torino, 1906.
= Procli Diodochi in Platonis Timaeum commentaria, ed. E. Diehl, Lipsiae, mcmvi.
— Platon, Tome x, Tim£e, Critias, texte 6tabli et traduit par Albert Rivaud, Paris, 1925.
Theon of Smyrna, rcov xar& to /nadrjjuarixdv xQyofatov r ip nXdxcovot; avdyvcocnv, ed. Dupuis, Paris, 1892.
Taylor, A. E., A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, Oxford, 1928.
xiii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
MARGINAL
PAGE
I7A-27B.
27C-29D.
29D-3OC.
3OC-3IA.
3IA-B.
3IB-32C.
32C-33B.
33B-34A.
34A-B.
34B-C.
35A.
35b“36b.
36B-D.
36D-E.
36»e-37C.
37C-38C.
P.C.
Preface
List of Abbreviations Introduction
THE TIMAEUS
Introductory Conversation ....
THE DISCOURSE OF TIMAEUS Prelude. The nature and scope of Physics .
(1) Being and Becoming
(2) The Cause of Becoming
(3) Model and copy
Physics only a ‘ likely story 1 .
I. The Works of Reason
The motive of creation
The Demiurge
The creator’s model
The intelligible Living Creature ....
One world, not many
The Body of the World Why this consists of four primary bodies The world’s body contains the whole of all the four
primary bodies
It is a sphere, without organs or limbs, rotating on
its axis
The World-Soul . . . .
Summary. Transition to the World-Soul
Soul is prior to body
Composition of the World-Soul .... Division of the World-Soul into harmonic intervals . Construction of the circles of the Same and the Different and the planetary circles The world’s body fitted to its soul Discourse in the World-Soul .
Time, the moving likeness of Eternity .
xv
PAGE
vii
xiii
9
21
24
26
27
28
33
34
39
40
41
43
52
54
57
58
58
59 66
72
93
94 97
B
CONTENTS
MARGINAL
PAGE PAGE
380-39E. The Planets as instruments of Time . . . 105
39E-40B. The four kinds of living creature. The heavenly gods 117 40B-C. . Rotation of the Earth ...... 120
40c— d. The further movements of the heavenly bodies are
too complicated for description here . . . 135
Table of Celestial motions . . .136
The Human Soul and Body
40D-41A. The traditional gods . . . . . .137
41A-D. The address to the gods 139
41D-42D. The composition of human souls. The Laws of
Destiny ........ 142
42D-B. Human souls sown in Earth and the planets . .146
42E-44D. The condition of the soul when newly incarnated . 147 44D-45B. Structure of the human body : head and limbs . 150 45B-46A. The eyes and the mechanism of vision . . *151
46A-C. Mirror images . . . . . . .154
46C-47E. Accessory causes contrasted with the purpose of sight
and hearing . . . . . . .156
II. What comes about of Necessity
47E-48E. Necessity. The Errant Cause . . . .160
Reason and Necessity . . . . . .162
48E-49A. The Receptacle of Becoming . . . 177
49A-50A. Fire, Air, etc., are names of qualities, not of substances 178 50A-C. The Receptacle compared to a mass of plastic material 181 500-5 ib. The Receptacle has no qualities of its own . .185
51B-E. Ideal models of Fire, Air, Water, Earth . .188
51E-52D. Summary description of the three factors : Form,
Copy, and Space as the Receptacle . . .191
52D-53C. Description of Chaos 197
53c~55c* Construction of the figures of the four primary bodies. 210 55C-D. Might there be five worlds ? . . . . .219
SSD-SGc. Assignment of the regular figures to the four primary
bodies ........ 222
560-570 Transformation of the primary bodies . . . 224
57C-D. Each primary body exists in various grades of size . 230
5715-580 Motion and Rest ....... 239
580-610 Varieties and compounds of the primary bodies . 246
Water, liquid and fusible : melting and cooling of the fusible ........ 247
Some varieties of the fusible type (metals) : gold, adamant, copper ...... 250
Solidification of fluids : water, hail, ice, snow, hoarfrost 252 Some varieties of the liquid type : juices . . 254
Varieties and compounds of earth : stone and earthen-
ware, soda and salt ; glass and wax . . . 255
xvi
CONTENTS
MARGINAL
|
PAGE |
PAGE |
|
|
6IC-64A. |
Tactile qualities, as they appear to sensation and |
258 |
|
perception ....... |
||
|
64A-65B. |
Pleasure and Pain ...... |
266 |
|
65B-66C. |
' Tastes ......... |
269 |
|
66D-67A. |
Odours ........ |
272 |
|
67A-C. |
Sounds. ........ |
275 |
|
67C-68D. |
Colours ........ |
276 |
|
68E-69A. |
Conclusion ........ |
279 |
|
III. The Co-operation of Reason and Necessity |
||
|
69A-D. |
Recapitulation. Addition of the mortal parts of Soul |
279 |
|
69D-72D. |
The bodily seats of the two mortal parts of the soul . Two groups of organs corresponding to the two mortal |
281 |
|
parts of the soul ...... |
282 |
|
|
The Spirited part situated in the heart. The lungs The Appetitive part situated in the belly. The liver |
282 |
|
|
and the spleen ....... |
286 |
|
|
72D-73A. |
Summary and transition to the rest of the body . |
290 |
|
73B-76E. |
The main structure of the human frame |
291 |
|
The marrow, seed, and brain .... |
293 |
|
|
Bone, flesh, sinews ...... |
295 |
|
|
The uneven distribution of flesh .... |
297 |
|
|
Skin, hair, nails ....... |
299 |
|
|
76E-77C. |
Plants ......... |
302 |
|
77C-E. ' |
Irrigation system to convey nourishment. The two |
|
|
principal veins ....... |
303 |
|
|
77E-79A. |
Respiration as the driving power of the irrigation |
|
|
system ........ |
306 |
|
|
79A-E. |
Respiration maintained by the circular thrust |
3i5 |
|
79E-80C. |
Digression. Other phenomena explained by the |
|
|
circular thrust ....... |
3i9 |
|
|
Concord of musical sounds ..... |
320 |
|
|
8od-8ie. |
How blood is formed by digestion and conveyed through the veins. Growth and decay. Natural |
|
|
death ........ |
327 |
|
|
Hydraulics of the irrigation system |
330 |
|
|
8ie-86a. |
Diseases of the body ...... (1) Diseases due to excess or defect or misplacement |
332 |
|
of the primary bodies .... |
334 |
|
|
(2) Diseases of the (secondary) tissues (3) Diseases due to (a) breath, ( b ) phlegm, (c) bile. |
335 |
|
|
Fevers ....... xvii |
340 |
CONTENTS
|
MARGINAL PAGE |
PAGE |
|
|
86B-87B. |
Disease in the soul due to defective bodily constitution |
|
|
and to bad nurture |
343 |
|
|
87B-89D. |
Disproportion between soul and body, to be remedied |
|
|
by regimen and exercise ..... |
349 |
|
|
89D-9OD. |
Care of the soul |
352 |
|
90E-92C. |
The differentiation of the sexes. The lower animals . |
355 |
|
92C. |
Conclusion . . . . . . |
358 |
|
Epilogue ' . |
361 |
|
|
Appendix ........ |
365 |
|
|
Index |
373 |
XVUl
INTRODUCTION
The Timaeus belongs to the latest group of Plato’s works : Sophist and Statesman , Timaeus and Critias, Philebus, Laws . The whole group must fall within the last twenty years of his life, which ended in 347 B.c. at the age of eighty or eighty-one. The Laws is the only dialogue that is certainly later than the Timaeus and Critias . It is probable, then, that Plato was nearer seventy than sixty when he projected the trilogy, Timaeus , Critias , Hermocrates — the most ambitious design he had ever conceived. Too ambitious, it would seem ; for he abandoned it when he was less than half- way through. The Critias breaks off in an unfinished sentence ; the Hermocrates was never written. Only the Timaeus is complete ; but its introductory part affords some ground for a conjectural reconstruction of the whole plan.
The conversation in this dialogue and its sequel is supposed to take place at Athens on the day of the Panathenaea. We are to imagine that, on the previous day, Socrates has been discoursing to Critias, his two guests from Italy and Sicily, Timaeus of Locri and Hermocrates of Syracuse, and a fourth unnamed person who is to-day absent through indisposition. The Panathenaic festival would provide an obvious occasion for the strangers’ presence in Athens, as it does for the visit of Parmenides and Zeno in another of the late dialogues.1
^he Athenian Critias is an old man, who finds it easier to remem- ber the long-distant past than what happened yesterday, and speaks of his boyhood as ‘ very long ago ’, when the poems of Solon could be described as a novelty. He cannot, therefore, be the Critias who was Plato’s mother’s cousin and one of the
Thirty Tyrants. He must be the grandfather of that Critias
and Plato’s great-grandfather.2 He tells us that he was eighty
1 Farm. 127D. The comparison is made by Pr. i, 84. That * the festival
of the goddess ’ (Athena) mentioned at 21 a and 26E is the Panathenaea is ^
clear from the context in both places and would never have been doubted ■£*
but for the unfounded notion that Socrates is supposed to have narrated of on the previous day the whole of the Republic, or a substantial part of it, ^ as it stands in our texts. This will be considered below. ^
2 See Burnet, Gk. Phil, i, 338, and Appendix. Tr., p. 23. Diehl, P.-W.^
Real-Encycl.t s.v. Kritias. p
INTRODUCTION
years younger than his own grandfather, the Critias who was Solon’s friend.
Hermocrates, according to Proclus (on 20A) and modem scholars, is the Syracusan who defeated the Athenian expedition to Sicily in Plato’s childhood (41 5-413 b.c.). Thucydides (vi, 72) describes him as a man of outstanding intelligence, conspicuous bravery, and great military' experience. At his first appearance in the History (iv, 58) he delivers a wise speech at a conference of Sicilian states, advising them to make peace among themselves and warning them of the danger of Athenian aggression. Evidently at that date (424 b.c.) he was already a prominent figure in Sicilian politics. After the defeat of the Athenian expedition he was banished by the democratic party. He lost his life in an attempt to reinstate him- self by force, probably in 407 b.c. In the present gathering of philosophers and statesmen he is pre-eminently the man of action. Since the dialogue that was to bear his name was never written, we can only guess why Plato chose him. It is curious to reflect that, while Critias is to recount how the prehistoric Athens of nine thousand years ago had repelled the invasion from Atlantis and saved'the Mediterranean peoples from slavery, Hermocrates would be remembered by the Athenians as the man who had repulsed their own greatest effort at imperialist expansion. He had also attempted to reform from within his native city, Syracuse, the scene of Plato's own abortive essays towards the reconstruction of existing society.
There is no evidence for the historic existence of Timaeus of Locri. If he did exist, we know nothing whatever about him beyond Socrates' description of him as a man well-born and rich, who had held the highest offices at Locri and become eminent in philosophy (20A), and Critias' remark that Timaeus was the best astronomer in the party and had made a special study of the nature of the universe. This is consistent with his being a man in middle life, contemporary with Hermocrates.1 The very fact that a man
1 1 cannot follow Tr.’s inference from Socrates’ words that ‘ we cannot imagine him (Timaeus) to be less than seventy and he may be decidedly older * (p. 17). Sir Arthur Eddington and Professor Dirac were both elected into chairs of mathematics at Cambridge in or about their thirtieth years. In the fifth century b.c. a man of that age might easily have read everything written in Greek on physics and mathematics. Nor did the Greeks wait till a man was nearing seventy before electing him to the highest offices. Tr. also says (p. 49) that ‘ the youth of Hermocrates explains why he remains silent throughout the dialogue. Proclus saw that his silence is significant, but did not interpret it correctly/ But Hermocrates does make a not unimportant contribution to the conversation on the only occasion offered him (20c), a fact on which Pr. comments. He also speaks in the introductory conversation of the Critias (io8b) in terms which, with other passages, make it clear that he was to take the leading part in the third dialogue of the trilogy.
2
INTRODUCTION
of such distinction has left not the faintest trace in political or philosophic history is against his claim to be a real person. The probability is that Plato invented him because he required a philo- sopher of the Western school, eminent both in science and states- manship, and there was no one to fill the part at the imaginary time of the dialogue. Archytas was of the type required,1 a brilliant mathematician and seven times strategics at Tarentum ; but he lived too late : Plato first met him about 388 b.c. In the first century a.d. a treatise On the Soul of the World and Nature was forged in the name of Timaeus of Locri. It was taken by the Neoplatonists for a genuine document, whereas it is now seen to be a mere summary of the Timaeus . In our dialogue, as Wilamo- witz observes ( Platon i, 591), Timaeus speaks dogmatically, but without any appeal to authority, and we may regard his doctrine simply as Plato’s own. So in the Sophist Plato speaks through the mouth of an Eleatic, who is yet not a champion of Parmenides’ system, but holds a theory of Forms unquestionably Platonic. Plato nowhere says that Timaeus is a Pythagorean. He some- times follows Empedocles, sometimes Parmenides ; indeed he borrows something from every pre-Socratic philosopher of import- ance, not to mention Plato’s contemporaries. Much of the doctrine is no doubt Pythagorean ; and this gave the satirist Timon a handle for his spiteful accusation of plagiarism against Plato. When the treatise ascribed to Timaeus had been forged, it was assumed that this was the book from which Plato had copied (Pr. i, 1 and 7). 2 As a consequence, all the doctrines which the forger had found in the Timaeus itself were supposed to be of Pythagorean origin. The testimony of later commentators is vitiated by this false assumption.
There is no ground for any conjecture as to the identity of the fourth person, who is absent. The only sensible remark recorded by Proclus is the observation of Atticus that he is presumably another visitor from Italy or Sicily, since Socrates asks Timaeus for news of him (Pr. i, 20). Plato may have wished to keep open the possibility of extending his trilogy to a fourth dialogue and held this unnamed person in reserve.3 Socrates proposes that the three who are present (not Timaeus alone) shall undertake the whole task which the four were to have scared. He first recapitu- lates his own discourse of the previous day. Socrates, we are told, had been describing the institutions of a city on the lines of the Republic, He had ended by expressing his wish to see this city transferred from the plane of theory to temporal fact. He now
1 As Frank observes, Plato und d. sog. Pythagoreer, 129,
2 For the history of this document, see Tr., p. 39, /
3 So Ritter, N. Unt., 181. /
3
INTRODUCTION
gives a summary of his own discourse, in response to Timaeus’ request to be reminded of the task to be performed by himself and his friends. Later (20c) it appears that such a reminder was really unnecessary, since the three have talked over the task required of them and have come prepared with a plan for its fulfilment. The summary is, in fact, entirely for the sake of informing the reader of Plato's design to identify the citizens of the ideal state with the prehistoric Athenians of Critias’ romance.
From ancient times to the present day many false inferences and theories have been founded on the situation imagined by Plato, in spite of his own clear indication conveyed in the statement that the summary actually given is complete : nothing of importance has been omitted (19A, b). Plato could not have stated more plainly that Socrates is not to be supposed to have narrated the whole conversation in the Republic as we have it. It follows at once that he did not intend the Republic to stand as the first dialogue in his new series.1 If he had, no recapitulation would have been needed ; the stage should have been set in an introduction to the Republic itself. But some scholars have seen evidence here for an original edition of the Republic, containing only the parts sum- marised. Such speculations are baseless. The summary is con- fined to the external institutions of the state outlined in Republic ii, 369-v, 471. It is impossible to imagine an edition of the dialogue omitting the whole of the analogy between the structure of the soul and that of the state, the analysis of the individual soul into three parts, and the discussion of the virtues of the individual and of the state ; nor could the omission of these topics in the summary be called a matter of no importance. The simple and natural conclusion was drawn long ago by Hirzel.2 No doubt Plato was thinking of the contents of that part of the Republic and intending his readers to recall them ; but he was not the slave of his own fictions. There was nothing to prevent him from imagining Socrates describing his ideal state on more than one occasion. He tells us here that Socrates has outlined its institutions, and nothing more, on the previous day. That day, moreover, was not the day after the feast of Bendis (Thargelion 19 or 20), when the conversation with Glaucon and Adeimantus at the house of Cephalus took place, though nothing would have been easier than to mention that date if Plato had meant to identify Socrates' discourse with
1 As Pr., for example, imagined (i, 8). In consequence, he and other critics were puzzled how to explain why the Republic was to precede the Timaeus, and not follow it, as it obviously should (i, 200 ff.).
8 Der Dialog. (1895), h 257. So Ritter, N. Unt. 177, and Friedlander, Plat. Schr. 600. Cf. also Rivaud, Timie, p. 19.
4
INTRODUCTION
the narration of the Republic . The present occasion is ' the festival of Athena and one to which the projected discourse of Critias is appropriate. As Proclus remarks (i, 172), the Panathenaic dis- courses regularly celebrated the Athenian victories by land and sea in the Persian Wars, while Critias celebrates Athens by recount- ing her victory over the invaders from Atlantis. Proclus himself had no doubt that the Lesser Panathenaea was meant ; he knew no more than that this festival ‘ came after ' the Bendidea and thought it took place ' about the same time ' (i, 84-5), whereas he knew that the Greater Panathenaea fell in Hecatombaeon (i, 26). Neither festival, in fact, came within two months of the Bendidea. Plato probably intended the Greater Panathenaea. There is no other indication of the dramatic date ; and it is unlikely that Plato had troubled himself about the question whether there was any such occasion on which Hermocrates could have visited Athens. The date is of no importance. In his earliest dialogues Plato was concerned to give the Athenians a true impression of Socrates' character and activity, and he was at great pains to recreate the atmosphere of the times. That interest was long past. In the latest group there was no motive to keep up the illusion that the conversations had really taken place. From all this it follows that the dramatic date and setting of the Republic have no bearing whatever on the dramatic date of the Timaeus trilogy. Also no ground remains for any inference that Plato meant the contents of the later books of the Republic to be superseded or corrected by the Timaeus .
The design of the present trilogy is thus completely independent of the Republic. What was that design ? The political question answered in the Republic had been : What is the least change in existing society necessary to cure the evils afflicting mankind ? Plato had imagined a reformed Greek city-state with institutions based, as he claimed, on the unalterable characteristics of human nature. It appeared to be just within the bounds of possible realisation. Referring to hopes founded on Dion or on the younger Dionysius, he had said that his state might see the light of day, if some prince could be found endowed with the philosophic nature, and if that nature could escape corruption. But towards the end of the Republic Plato seems less hopeful, and the state recedes as a pattern laid up in heaven, by which the merits and defects of all existing constitutions might be measured and appraised. More- over, since that dialogue was written, Plato's Sicilian adventures
1 2 1 a, iv rj} iravqyvpei (the word implies an important festival) ; 26E, rfj irapovcrfl rrjs deov dvcriq.. There was no such festival on Thargelion 21. The Plynteria came five days later.
5
INTRODUCTION
had ended in disappointment. Accordingly, the discourse re- capitulated at the opening of the Timaeus covers only the outline of the state given in the earlier books of the Republic , ignoring all the later books, which had started from the question how it might be realised in the future and sketched its possible decline through lower forms of polity. The new trilogy is to transfer this state to the plane of actual existence, not in the future, but in the remote past, as the Athens of nine thousand years ago. This is the subject of the Critias, introduced at once as the central theme of the whole.
By way of preface, Timaeus is to recount his myth of creation, ending with the birth of mankind. The whole movement starts from the ideal world of the Demiurge and the eternal Forms, descending thence to the frame of the visible universe and the nature of man, whose further fortunes Critias will * take over ' for his story. Looking deeper, we see that the chief purpose of the cosmological introduction is to link the morality externalised in the ideal society to the whole organisation of the world.1 The Republic had dwelt on the structural analogy between the state and the individual soul. Now Plato intends to base his conception of human life, both for the individual and for society, on the inex- pugnable foundation of the order of the universe. The parallel of macrocosm and microcosm runs through the whole discourse. True morality is not a product of human evolution, still less the arbitrary enactment of human wills. It is an order and harmony of the soul ; and the soul itself is a counterpart, in miniature, of the soul of the world, which has an everlasting order and harmony of its own, instituted by reason. This order was revealed to every soul before its birth (41E) ; and it is revealed now in the visible architecture of the heavens. That human morality is so based on the cosmic order had been implied, here or there, in earlier works ; but the Timaeus will add something more like a demonstration, although in mythical form.
In the next dialogue Critias will repeat the legend learnt by Solon from an Egyptian priest : how primitive Athens (now to be iden- tified with Socrates' ideal state) had defeated the invaders from Atlantis. In the very hour when freedom and civilisation were saved for the mediterranean world, the victorious Athenians had themselves been overwhelmed by flood and earthquake. Atlantis also sank beneath the sea and vanished. What was to follow ? The story was not to end with the cataclysm of the Critias ; and the Egyptian priest, discoursing at some length to Solon on these periodic catastrophes in which all but a small remnant of mankind perishes, has explained how the seeds of a new civilisation are 1 Cf. Fraccaroli, p. 13.
6
INTRODUCTION
preserved either on the mountains or in the river valleys, according as the destruction is by flood or fire. When it is by flood, as at the end of Critias' story, the cities on the plains are overwhelmed ; only the mountain shepherds survive, and all culture is lost. Taking up the story at this point, what could Hermocrates do, if not describe the re-emergence of culture in the Greece of prehistoric and historic times ? If so, the projected contents of the unwritten dialogue are to be found in the third and subsequent books of the Laws. There, after some preliminary r amblings about music and wine in Books i and ii, the Athenian settles down to business at the opening of Book iii with the question : What is the origin of society and government ? In the immensity of past time myriads of states have arisen and perished, reproducing again and again :he same types of constitution. How do they arise ? Mankind las often been almost destroyed by flood, plagues, and many other causes ; only a small remnant is left. Imagine one such destruc- tion— the Deluge. The herdsmen on the mountain-tops alone survived, while the cities on the plains or near the sea were over- whelmed. All arts and inventions perished ; all statecraft was forgotten. Here is exactly the situation with which the Critias was to end, described in language very like that of the Egyptian priest. The Laws continues the story. After the deluge came a very long and slow advance towards the present state of things. Before the metals were rediscovered there was an idyllic phase of society, resembling descriptions of the Golden Age, under the rule of patriarchal custom. Next came the beginnings of agriculture and the formation of more permanent settlements. The coalescence pf various tribes led to the growth of aristocracies, or perhaps monarchies, with kings and magistrates. A third stage saw the blending of different types of constitution. Mankind, forgetting the dangers of flood, ventured down from the hills. Cities like jHomer’s Troy were built once more on the plains. (Here we reach what was for the Greeks the dawn of history.) Then followed the |rojan War ; and the troubles consequent upon the warriors' bmecoming led to the migrations. Finally we reach the settle- lent of Crete and Lacedaemon. The Athenian recommends a Aidy of this succession of social forms, to discover what laws Aserve a city or tend to ruin it. The history of the Dorian states flffegests that government should be a mixture of monarchy and (democracy. It is then proposed to apply this principle by framing taws for a new colony. Book iv opens with the choice of a site, (and the rest of the treatise outlines the institutions.
1 Since all this fits on exactly to the end planned for the Critias , fit may well have been Plato's original purpose to use in the Her-
7
INTRODUCTION
mocrates the material he had been collecting from a study of the laws of Greek states. The whole trilogy would then have covered the story of the world from creation, through prehistoric legend and all historic time, to a fresh project for future reform. But Plato was getting old. The composition of the Critias seems to have been interrupted ; it stops in an unfinished sentence. After the interruption Plato might well feel that he could not complete all this elaborate romance about the invasion from Atlantis before starting upon the subject nearest his heart, which now fills ten books of the Laws.1 There was, in fact, by this time far too much material for a continuation of the Timaeus trilogy, even with the assistance of the unnamed absentee. So he abandoned the Critias , and wrote the Laws in place of the Hermocrates.2
1 In the same way (si parva licet) Mr. H. G. Wells has, with advancing years, grown impatient of the Utopian romance and taken to expressing hif hopes and fears for the future through ever thinner disguises, ending wit! autobiography.
2 For the conjecture here elaborated see Raeder, 379.
8
THE TIMAEUS
17A-27B. Introductory Conversation
An account of the persons who take part in the conversation prefacing the discourse of Timaeus has already been given in the Introduction (pp. 1-3). We may proceed at once to the text.
t
Socrates. Timaeus. Hermocrates. Critias
7A. Socrates. One, two, three — but where, my dear Timaeus, is the fourth of those guests of yesterday who were to entertain me to-day ?
Timaeus. He suddenly felt unwell, Socrates ; he would not have failed to join our company if he could have helped it. Socr. Then it will fall to you and your companions to supply the part of our absent friend as well as your own.
b. Tim. By all means ; we will not fail to do the best we can. Yesterday you entertained us with the hospitality due to strangers, and it would not be fair if the rest of us were backward in offering you a feast in return.
Socr. Well, then, do you remember the task I set you — all the matters you were to discourse upon ?
Tim. We can remember some ; and you are here to remind us of any that we may have forgotten. Or rather, if it is not too much trouble, will you recapitulate them briefly from the beginning, to fix them more firmly in our minds ?
c. Socr. I will. Yesterday the chief subject of my own dis- \ course was what, as it seemed to me, would be the best I form of society and the sort of men who would compose it.
Tim. Yes, Socrates, and we all found the society you described very much to our mind.
Socr. We began, did we not ? by separating off the farmers and all the other craftsmen from the class that was to fight in defence of the city ?
Tim. Yes.
d. Socr. And when we assigned only one occupation to each man, one craft for which he was naturally fitted, these, we said, who were to fight on behalf of all, must be nothing else
9
INTRODUCTORY CONVERSATION 17a-27b
17D. but guardians of the city against the assault of any that would injure her, whether from within or from without, 18. dealing justice to their subjects mildly, as to natural friends, and showing a stem face to those enemies who meet them in battle.
Tim. Quite true.
Socr. There was, in fact, a certain temperament that we said a guardian should have, at once spirited and philosophic to an exceptional degree, enabling them to show a right measure of mildness or sternness to friend or foe.
Tim. Yes.
Socr. And for their education, they were to be trained in gymnastic and music and in all the studies suitable for them. Tim. Certainly.
b. Socr. And the men so trained, we said, were never to regard gold or silver or anything else as their private possessions. Rather, as a garrison drawing from those whom they protect sojmuch pay for their services as would reasonably suffice men of a temperate life, they were to share all expense and lead a common life together, in the constant exercise of manly qualities and relieved from all other occupations.
Tim. So it was provided.
c. Socr. And then we spoke of women. We remarked that their natures should be formed to the same harmonious blend of qualities as those of men ; 1 and they should all be given a share in men’s employments of every sort, in war as well as in their general mode of life.
Tim. That too was prescribed.
Socr. And then there was the procreation of children. Here, perhaps, the novelty of our regulations makes them easy to remember. We laid down that they should all have their marriages and children in common. They were to contrive that no one of them should ever recognise his own offspring, D. but each should look upon all as one family, treating as brothers and sisters all who fell within appropriate limits of age, and as parents and grandparents, or as children and grandchildren, those who fell above or below those limits. Tim. Yes ; that, as you say, is easy to remember.
Socr. Then, in order that they might have the best possible natural dispositions from birth, we said, you remember, that the magistrates of both sexes must make secret arrangements
1 owapfwoTcov refers to the proper blend of spirited and philosophic elements mentioned above, which exist in women as in men (Rep. 456A). For awapfxoTTciv cf. Rep. 443d*
INTRODUCTORY CONVERSATION
i8e. for the contraction of marriages by a certain method of draw- ing lots, which would apportion both to the better men and to the worse partners like themselves and yet not lead to any ill-feeling, because they would imagine the allotment to be the result of chance.
Tim. I remember that.
19. Socr. And further, the children of the better sort were to be educated, while those of the worse should be secretly dispersed through the rest of the community. The rulers were to keep the children under observation as they grew up, and from time to time take back again those who were found worthy, while the undeserving ones in their own ranks should take the places of the promoted.
Tim. Just so.
Socr. Well, then, my dear Timaeus, have we now passed in review all the main points of yesterday’s conversation ; or is there anything that we feel has been left out ?
b. Tim. No, Socrates ; you have exactly described what was said.
As I have argued in the Introduction, we are evidently not to imagine that Socrates has, on the previous day, narrated the whole conversation in the Republic or any part of it. There is, in fact, no part of the Republic of which it could be said that ‘ all the main points ’ were covered by the above summary. Socrates now comes to the instructions he is supposed to have given on the previous day. He wishes the other three to draw a picture of his ideal State in actual existence. With his usual modesty, he represents this task as beyond his own powers. He had never been a man of action or taken part in politics.
19B. Socr. I may now go on to tell you how I feel about the society we have described. I feel rather like a man who has been looking at some noble creatures in a painting, or perhaps at real animals, alive but motionless, and conceives
c. a desire to watch them in motion and actively exercising the powers promised by their form. That is just what I feel about the city we have described : I should like to hear an account of her putting forth her strength in such contests as a city will engage in against others, going to war in a manner worthy of her, and in that war achieving results befitting her training and education, both in feats of arms and in negotiation with various other states.
D. Now here, Critias and Hermocrates, my judgment upon
11
INTRODUCTORY CONVERSATION 17a-27b
19D. myself is that to celebrate our city and its citizens as they deserve would be beyond my powers. My incapacity is not surprising ; but I have formed the same judgment about the poets of the past and of to-day. Not that I have a low opinion of poets in general ; but anyone can see that an imitator, of whatever sort, will reproduce best and most easily the surroundings in which he has been brought up ; e. what lies outside that range is even harder to reproduce successfully in discourse than it is in action. The sophists, again, I have always thought, have had plenty of practice in making fine speeches on other subjects of all sorts ; but with their habit of wandering from city to city and having no settled home of their own, I am afraid they would hardly hit upon 1 what men who are both philosophers and statesmen would do and say in times of war, in the conduct of actual fighting or of negotiation. There remain only people of your condition, equipped by temperament and education for 20. both philosophy and statesmanship. Timaeus, for instance, belongs to an admirably governed State, the Italian Locri,2 where he is second to none in birth and substance, and has not only enjoyed the highest offices and distinctions his country could offer, but has also, I believe, reached the highest eminence in philosophy. Critias, again, is well known to all of us at Athens as no novice in any of the subjects we are discussing ; and that Hermocrates is fully qualified in all such matters by natural gifts and education, we may trust b. the assurance of many witnesses.3 * Accordingly this was in
1 daroxov. This unusual word recalls the description of rhetoric in the Gorgias 4 63 a as a branch of Parasitism — ‘ a profession which is not of the nature of an art, but demands a shrewd and virile spirit {i/jvxrjs crroxaarucfjs kcu avhpeias) with a native cleverness in human relations \ Plato there seems to have echoed Isocrates’ eulogy of rhetoric as demanding ‘ a virile and imaginative spirit * {fox?)5 ovhpiKijs Kai 8 o^aoriKijs, k. ao<j>. ij), mali- ciously substituting oToxamKrjs • In the Euthydemus (305c) Isocrates is evidently aimed at as one who is ‘ on the borderline ' between philosophy and statesmanship and fails to make the best of either.
2 The constitution of Locri was attributed to Zaleucus (Ar., Pol. 12 74 a, 22). At Laws 638B the Athenian says that the Locrians are reputed to have the best laws of any western state. If Timaeus never existed, this would account for Plato’s choice of Locri for his native place.
3 At 20A, 8 read civ at ravra Uav^v F Y, Pr., to avoid hiatus with Uav^v. So Blass (Att. Bered. ii, 458), who reckons hardly more than 50 cases of ‘ illegitimate ’ hiatus in the Timaeus, some of which can be removed by adopting other MS. readings, as, for example, here and at 2 3 a, 2 and 38A, 4. The rest, he thinks, should be regarded with suspicion, and some can be easily removed by conjecture, e.g. rravra for airavra 78c, 1. According to
Raeder’s figures, the instances of illegitimate hiatus in Lysis , Apol., Gorg.t
12
INTRODUCTORY CONVERSATION
20B. my mind yesterday when I was so ready to grant your request for a discourse on the constitution of society : I knew that, if you would consent to supply the sequel, no one could do it better ; you could describe this city engaged in a war worthy of her and acting up to our expectations, as no other living persons could. So, after fulfilling my part, I set you, in my turn, the task of which I am now reminding you. You agreed
c. to consult among yourselves and to requite my hospitality to-day. So here I am in full dress for the entertainment, which I am most eager to receive.
Hermocrates. Indeed, Socrates, as Timaeus said, we shall not fail to do our best, and we have no excuse for refusing. Yesterday, as soon as we had reached Critias’ guest-chamber, where we are staying, and even while we were still on the
d. way there, we were considering this very matter. Critias then produced a story which he had heard long ago. Critias, will you repeat it now to Socrates, and he shall help us to judge whether or not it will answer the purpose of the task he is laying on us ?
Critias. It shall be done, if our remaining partner, Timaeus, approves.
Tim. Certainly I approve.
Crit. Listen then, Socrates, to a story which, though strange, is entirely true, as Solon, wisest of the Seven, once
E. affirmed. He was a relative and close friend of Dropides, my great-grandfather, as he says himself several times in his poems ; and he told my grandfather Critias (according to the story the old man used to repeat to us) that there were great and admirable exploits performed by our own city long ago, which have been forgotten through lapse of time and the destruction of human life.1 Greatest of all was one 21. which it will now suit our purpose to recall, and so at once pay our debt of gratitude to you and celebrate the goddess, on her festival, with a true and merited hymn of praise. Socr. Good. But what was this ancient exploit that your grandfather described on Solon’s authority as unrecorded and yet really performed by our city ?
Phaedo, Republic range between 35 and 45 per page of the Didot edition. In Soph, and Polit. the figures drop to o-6 and 0*4, and the Timaeus shows only a slightly higher figure, 1*1. There is a slight further rise in Philebus (3*7) and Laws (5-8).
1 i.e. the almost complete destructions of mankind outside Egypt by flood or fire, the <f>9opal av9p<Irrr<uv of 22c and Laws 677A, one of which overwhelmed the actors in this exploit (<f>9opa row ipyaoapAv cov, 2 id). Both Plato and Aristotle believed that such catastrophes occur.
P.C. 13 C
INTRODUCTORY CONVERSATION 17a-27b
21. Crit. I will tell you the story I heard as an old tale 1 from a man who was himself far from young. At that time, indeed, Critias, by his own account, was close upon ninety,
B. and I was, perhaps, ten years old. We were keeping the Apaturia ; it was the Children’s Day.2 For us boys there were the usual ceremonies : our fathers offered us prizes for reciting. Many poems by different authors were repeated, and not a few of us children sang Solon’s verses, which were a novelty in those days. One of the clansmen said — either because he really thought so or to please Critias — that he considered Solon to have shown himself not only extremely
c. wise but, in his writings, the most free-spirited of poets. The old man — how well I remember it ! — was much pleased and said with a smile :
‘Yes, Amynander ; if only he had taken his poetry seriously like others, instead of treating it as a pastime, and if he had finished the story he brought home from Egypt and had not been forced to lay it aside by the factions and other troubles he found here on his return, I believe no other
d. poet — not Homer or Hesiod — would have been more famous than he.’
‘ And what was the story, Critias ? ’ Amynander asked.
* It was about the greatest achievement ever performed by our city — one that deserved to be the most renowned of all, but through lapse of time and the destruction of the actors, the story has not lasted down to our time.’
‘ Tell it from the beginning ’, said Amynander. ‘ How and from whom did Solon hear this tale which he reported as being true ? ’
E. ‘ In Egypt,’ said Critias, c at the apex of the Delta, where the stream of the Nile divides, there is a province called the Saitic. The chief city of this province is Sais, from which came King Amasis. The goddess who presides over their city is called in Egyptian Neith, in Greek, by their account, Athena ; they are very friendly to Athens and claim a certain kinship with our countrymen. Solon said that, when he travelled thither, he was received with much honour ; and 22. further that, when he inquired about ancient times from the priests who knew most of such matters, he discovered that neither he nor any other Greek had any knowledge of anti- quity worth speaking of. Once, wishing to lead them on
iv, i.e. the story was already old when Critias heard it from Solon 1 and Critias himself was very old when he told it to his grandson.
* The day on which children were inscribed on the register of the clan.
I4
INTRODUCTORY CONVERSATION
22. to talk about ancient times, he set about telling them the most venerable of our legends, about Phoroneus the reputed first man and Niobe, and the story how Deucalion and Pyrrha
b. survived the deluge. He traced the pedigree of their des- cendants, and tried, by reckoning the generations, to compute how many years had passed since those events.
" Ah, Solon, Solon/' said one of the priests, a very old man, “ you Greeks are always children ; in Greece there is no such thing as an old man."
“ What do you mean ? " Solon asked.
“You are all young in your minds," said the priest, “ which hold no store of old belief based on long tradition, no know- ledge hoary with age. The reason is this. There have
c. been, and will be hereafter, many and divers destructions of mankind, the greatest by fire and water, though other lesser ones are due to countless other causes. Thus the story current also in your part of the world, that Phaethon, child of the Sun, once harnessed his father's chariot but could not guide it on his father's course and so burnt up everything on the face of the earth and was himself consumed by the thunderbolt — this legend has the air of a fable ; but the
D. truth behind it is a deviation of the bodies that revolve in heaven round the earth and a destruction, occurring at long intervals, of things on earth by a great conflagration. At such times all who live on mountains and in high regions where it is dry perish more completely than dwellers by the rivers or the sea. We have the Nile, who preserves us in so many ways and in particular saves us from this affliction when he is set free.1 On the other hand, when the gods cleanse the earth with a flood of waters, the herdsmen and shepherds in the mountains are saved, while the inhabitants
e. of cities in your part of the world are swept by the rivers into the sea. But in this country the water does not fall from above upon the fields either then or at other times ; its way is always to rise up over them from below. It is for these reasons that the traditions preserved here are the oldest on record ; 2 though as a matter of fact in all regions where
23. inordinate cold or heat does not forbid it mankind exists at all
1 The question from what, and by what, the Nile is * set free ’ is discussed in the Appendix (p. 365).
a Afyercu, cf. A eyopcvov 21 a, 5. Not ‘are said to be': the Egyptian traditions are the oldest, because, although mankind is not completely destroyed anywhere, no records are kept elsewhere by the unlettered survivors of floods and conflagrations.
15
INTRODUCTORY CONVERSATION
17a-27b
23 . times in larger or smaller numbers. Any great or noble achieve - ment or otherwise exceptional event that has come to pass, either in your parts or here or in any place of which we have tidings,1 has been written down for ages past in records that are preserved in our temples ; whereas with you and other peoples again and again life has only lately been enriched with letters and all the other necessaries of civilisation when once more, after the usual period of years, the torrents from heaven sweep down like a pestilence leaving only the rude
b. and unlettered among you. And so you start again like children, knowing nothing of what existed in ancient times here or in your own country. For instance, these genealogies of your countrymen, Solon, that you were reciting just now, are little better than nursery tales. To begin with, your people remember only one deluge, though there were many earlier ; and moreover you do not know that the bravest and noblest race in the world once lived in your country.
c. From a small remnant of their seed you and all your fellow- citizens are derived ; but you know nothing of it because the survivors for many generations died leaving no word in writing. Once, Solon, before the greatest of all destruc- tions by water, what is now the city of the Athenians was the most valiant in war and in all respects the best governed beyond comparison : her exploits and her government are said to have been the noblest under heaven of which report has
D. come to our ears/1
On hearing this, Solon was astonished and eagerly begged the priests to tell him from beginning to end all about those ancient citizens.
" Willingly,” answered the priest ; “ I will tell you for your own sake and for your city's, and above all for honour of the goddess, patroness of our city and of yours, who has fostered both and instructed them in arts. Yours she
E. founded first by a thousand years, from the time when she took over the seed of your people from Earth and Hephaestus ; ours only in later time ; and the age of our institutions is given in the sacred records as eight thousand years. Accord- ingly those fellow-countrymen of yours lived nine thousand years ago ; and I will shortly describe their laws and the noblest exploit they performed ; we will go through the
24. whole story in detail another time at our leisure, with the records before us.
1 Read a/coty (AY, Pr.), with Blass and A.-H., to avoid hiatus. See note on 20A.
16
INTRODUCTORY CONVERSATION
24. ** Consider their laws in comparison with ours ; you will
find here to-day many parallels illustrating your own institutions in those days. First, there is the separation of the priesthood from the other classes ; next the class of craftsmen — you will find that each kind keeps to its own craft without infringing on another ; shepherds, hunters,
B. farmers.1 The soldiers, moreover, as you have no doubt noticed, are here distinct from all other classes ; they are forbidden by law to concern themselves with anything but war. Besides, the fashion of their equipment is with spear and shield, arms which we were the first people in Asia to bear, for the goddess taught us, as she had taught, you first in your part of the world. Again, in the matter of wisdom, you see what great care the law has bestowed upon it here from the very beginning, both as concerns the order of the
c. world, deriving from those divine things the discovery of all arts applied to human affairs, down to the practice of divination and medicine with a view to health, and acquiring all the other branches of learning connected therewith.2 All this order and system the goddess had bestowed upon you earlier when she founded your society, choosing the place in which you were bom because she saw that the well- tempered climate would bear a crop of men of high intelli- gence. Being a lover of war and of wisdom, the goddess chose
d. out the region that would bear men most closely resembling herself and there made her first settlement. And so you dwelt there with institutions such as I have mentioned and even better, surpassing all mankind in every excellence, as might be looked for in men bom of gods and nurtured by them.
" Many great exploits of your city are here recorded
1 Isocrates’ Busiris (certainly earlier in date than the Timaeus) mentions the Egyptian caste system, and is itself based on Herod, ii, 164-8. But it is not unlikely that Plato himself had visited Egypt.
2 A.-H. suspects the soundness of the text here. The general sense seems to be that the Egyptians base all the arts applied to human life on the study of the heavens (for anavra avcvpwv meaning the invention of arts, cf. Xeno- phanes frag. 18 ovtol an* dpxijs navra deol dvrjTola* vnebet^av, aXXa ypova) ^rjTovvres c<f>€vplaKov<nv dpLcivov). Plato’s language recalls Isocrates, Busiris 21: Busiris is tt}s ncpl ttjv <f>p6v7)cnv inificXcias a trios. The leisure he provided for the priests enabled them to discover the art of medicine and to practise philosophy . The younger priests study astronomy , calculation, and geometry (perhaps the tiadrjpLara Plato mentions in the last clause). According to Diod. i, 82, 3 Egyptian physicians were bound to follow the treatment laid down by ancient physicians in sacred books, and condemned to death for departing from it. Aristotle (Pol. iii, 12 86a, 13) says that they were allowed to alter the treatment after the fourth day.
17
INTRODUCTORY CONVERSATION 17a-27b
24D. for the admiration of all ; but one surpasses the rest in E. greatness and valour. The records tell how great a power your city once brought to an end when it insolently advanced against all Europe and Asia, starting from the Atlantic ocean outside. For in those days that ocean could be crossed, since there was an island 1 in it in front of the strait which your countrymen tell me you call the Pillars of Heracles. The island was larger than Libya and Asia put together; and from it the voyagers of those days could reach the other islands, and from these islands the whole of the opposite 25. continent bounding that ocean which truly deserves the name. For all these parts that lie within the strait I speak of, seem to be a bay with a narrow entrance ; that outer sea is the real ocean, and the land which entirely surrounds it really deserves the name of continent in the proper sense.2 Now on this Atlantic island there had grown up an extraordinary power under kings who ruled not only the whole island but many of the other islands and parts of the continent ; and besides that, within the straits, they were lords of Libya B. so far as to Egypt, and of Europe to the borders of Tyrrhenia. All this power, gathered into one, attempted at one swoop to enslave your country and ours and all the region within the strait. Then it was, Solon, that the power of your city was made manifest to all mankind in its valour and strength. She was foremost of all in courage and in the arts of war, c, and first as the leader of Hellas, then forced by the defection of the rest to stand alone, she faced the last extreme of danger, vanquished the invaders, and set up her trophy ; the peoples not yet enslaved she preserved from slavery, and all the rest of us who dwell within the bounds set by Heracles she freed with ungrudging hand. Afterwards there was a time of inordinate earthquakes and floods ; there came D. one terrible day and night, in which all your men of war were swallowed bodily by the earth, and the island Atlantis also sank beneath the sea and vanished. Hence to this day that outer ocean cannot be crossed or explored, the way being blocked by mud, just below the surface,3 left by the settling down of the island/' '
1 Serious scholars now agree that Atlantis probably owed its existence entirely to Plato’s imagination. See Frutiger, Mythes de Platon, 244 ff.
* The Etym. Mag. connects rjncipog with aireipos : land not bounded by sea as an island is. iravreXats should be taken with nepiexovaa. The outer continent is ‘ unbounded ’ as forming a completely unbroken ring.
* Heading Kara Ppaycos, 1 at a slight depth \ See Appendix, p. 366.
18
INTRODUCTORY CONVERSATION
5E. Now, Socrates, I have given you a brief account of the story told by the old Critias as he heard it from Solon. When you were speaking yesterday about your state and its citizens, I recalled this story and I was surprised to notice in how many points your account exactly agreed, by some miraculous 6. chance, with Solon's. But I would say nothing at the moment ; after so long an interval, my memory was im- perfect. So I resolved that I would not repeat the story until I had first gone over it thoroughly in my own mind. That is why I so readily agreed to the task you laid upon us yesterday ; I thought that in any case like this the hardest part is to find some suitable theme as a foundation for one's design, and that that need would be fairly well supplied. Accordingly, as Hermocrates has told you, no sooner had I left yesterday than I set about repeating the story to our
b. friends as I recalled it, and when I got home I recovered pretty well the whole of it by thinking it over at night. How true is the saying that what we learn in childhood has a wonderful hold on the memory ! I doubt if I could recall everything that I heard yesterday ; but I should be sur- prised if I have lost any detail of this story told me so long ago. I listened at the time with much boyish delight, and
c. the old man was very ready to answer the questions I kept on asking ; so it has stayed in my mind indelibly like an encaustic picture. Moreover, I told it all to our friends early this morning, so that they might be as well provided as myself with materials for their discourse.
To come to the point I have been leading up to : I am ready now, Socrates, to tell the story, not in summary, but in full detail as I heard it. We will transfer the state you described yesterday and its citizens from the region of
d. theory to concrete fact ; we will take the city to be Athens and say that your imaginary citizens are those actual ances- tors of ours, whom the priest spoke of. They will fit per- fectly, and there will be no inconsistency in declaring them to be the real men of those ancient times. Dividing the work between us, we will all try to the best of our powers to carry out your injunctions properly. It is for you to consider, Socrates, whether this story will suit our purpose or we must
E. look for another in its stead.
Socr. How could we change it for the better, Critias ? Its connection with the goddess makes it specially appropriate to her festival to-day ; and it is surely a great point that it is no fiction, but genuine history. How and where shall we
INTRODUCTORY CONVERSATION 17a-27b
26e. find other characters, if we abandon these ? No, you shall speak and good luck 1 be with you ; I have earned by my 27. discourse of yesterday the right to take a rest and listen. Crit. Then I will submit to you the plan we have arranged for your entertainment, Socrates. We decided that Timaeus shall speak first. He knows more of astronomy than the rest of us and has made knowledge of the nature of the universe his chief object ; he will begin with the birth of the world and end with the nature of man. Then I am to follow, taking over from him mankind, whose origin he has described, and from you a portion of them who have received a supremely B. good training. I shall then, in accordance with Solon's enactment as well as with his story, bring them before our tribunal and make them our fellow-citizens, on the plea that they are those old Athenians of whose disappearance we are informed by the report of the sacred writings. In the rest of our discourse we shall take their claim to the citizenship of Athens as established.
Sock. I see that I am to receive a complete and splendid banquet of discourse in return for mine. So you, Timaeus, are to speak next, when you have invoked the gods as custom requires.
It has often been remarked that this introductory conversation, right down to Critias' last speech, might have been written for the Critias only, as if the task set by Socrates could have been com- pletely fulfilled by the story of Atlantis. Plato's purpose may have been to indicate that, now as ever, his chief interest lies in the field of morals and politics, not in physical speculation. The whole cosmology of the Timaeus is only a preface to the legendary picture of the ideal state in action and to whatever were to have been the contents of the Hermocrates. Another motive for here anticipating the Atlantis story was suggested by Longinus (Pr. i, 83). The Timaeus is not easy reading ; and the physiological and medical chapters towards the end would be repellent to many. The reader might be encouraged to persevere by the promise of an exciting romance to follow. It is, at any rate, well to remember that the unfinished state of the trilogy gives the Timaeus a prominence it would not have had in the completed design.
1 Good luck is invoked here, the gods below (27c). Cf. Laws vi, 757E dcdv tea 1 dvaBijv rvxrjv kcu totc cv cvxats cmKaXovfjicvovs. At Epin. 991 D and 992 A &€&v KaXclv and rvxnv KaXtlv are treated as equivalent.
20
NATURE AND SCOPE OF PHYSICS
THE DISCOURSE OF TIMAEUS
27C-29D Prelude. The nature and scope of Physics
Timaeus' ‘ prelude ', marked off from what follows by Socrates’ expression of approval (29D), lays down the principles of the whole discourse and defines the limitations of any treatment of physics. It is constructed with great care. After the opening invocation of the gods, the second paragraph states three general premisses concerning anything that is not eternal, but comes to be. These premisses are then applied successively to the visible universe. (1) The eternal is the intelligible ; what comes to be is the sensible. Since the world is sensible, it must be a thing that comes to be. (2) Whatever comes to be must have a cause. Therefore the world has a cause — a maker and father ; but he is hard to find. (3) The work of any maker will be good only if he fashions it after an eternal model. The world is good ; so its model must have been eternal. Finally, the conclusion is drawn : any account that can be given of the physical world can be no better than a ' likely story ', because the world itself is only a * likeness ' of unchanging reality.
27c. Tim. That, Socrates, is what all do, who have the least portion of wisdom : always, at the outset of every under- taking, small or great, they call upon a god. We who are now to discourse about the universe — how it came into being, or perhaps had no beginning of existence — must, if our senses be not altogether gone astray, invoke gods and goddesses with a prayer that our discourse throughout may be above all pleasing to them and in consequence satisfactory to us.1 D. Let this suffice, then, for our invocation of the gods ; but we must also call upon our own powers,2 so that you may follow most readily and I may give the clearest expression to my thought on the theme proposed.
rjplv is usually taken to mean f consistently with ourselves ' and translated ‘ consistent with itself \ But this should be enoptvajs rjplv avrols, and at 29c we are told not to expect avrovs eavrols 6poXoyovp4vovs X oyovs. Proclus rightly understood eiropevtos as ‘ secondarily ' or * conse- quentially ' (as at Ar., Met. 1032A, 22 : the word ‘ being ’ applies primarily to substances, enopevajs to other categories) : he writes tovto yap eon to aKporarov decjpias t4Xos, to els rov Belov avQ.hpap.tiv vovv. . . . hevrepov he hrj /cat irropevov rovrep to Kara rov avdpcomvov vovv /cat to rrjs emarrjprjs <f>a>S hiarrepavaaQax rijv oXrjv Betoplav (I, 22 1). rjplv depends on Kara vovv, as at 17c /cot paXa ye rjplv . . . Kara vovv, 26D el Kara vovv 6 Xoyos rjplv ovtqs. enopevcos replaces the usual eneira partly for euphony, partly perhaps to suggest that the discourse, if pleasing to heaven, should consequently be satisfactory to us.
8 to 1 )p4T€pov, so A.-H. Cf. to epov, * my incapacity ' (19D, 3).
21
NATURE AND SCOPE OF PHYSICS 27c-29d
27D. We must, then, in my judgment, first make this distinc- tion : what is that which is always real and has no becoming,
28. and what is that which is always becoming and is never real ? That which is apprehensible by thought with a rational account is the thing that is' always unchangeably real ; whereas that which is the object of belief together with unreasoning sensation is the thing that becomes and passes away, but never has real being.1 Again, all that becomes must needs become by the agency of some cause ; for without a cause nothing can come to be. Now whenever the maker of anything looks to that which is always unchanging and uses a model of that description in fashioning the form and quality of his work, all that he thus accomplishes must be
b. good.2 If he looks to something that has come to be and uses a generated model, it will not be good.
So concerning the whole Heaven or World — let us call it by whatsoever name may be most acceptable to it 3 — we must ask the question which, it is agreed, must be asked at the outset of inquiry concerning anything : Has it always been, without any source of becoming ; or has it come to be, starting from some beginning ? It has come to be ; for it can be seen and touched and it has body, and all such
c. things are sensible ; and, as we saw, sensible things, that are to be apprehended by belief together with sensation, are things that become and can be generated. But again, that which becomes, we say, must necessarily become by the agency of some cause. The maker and father of this universe it is a hard task to find, and having found him it would be impossible to declare him to all mankind. Be that as it may, we must go back to this question about the world :
29. After which of the two models did its builder frame it — after that which is always in the same unchanging state, or after that which has come to be ? Now if this world is good and
1 With Pr. (i. 240) I take del Kara raura ov ( = to ov act, ycvcoiv Sc ovk c\ov above) and yiyvoficvov teal dvoXXv/xcvov, ovtcos Sc ouScnorc ov ( = to ytyvoficvov ficv ac i, ov Sc ovScttotc above) as the terms to be defined and to votfoci . . . ircpiXrjiTTov and to . . . ho^aarov as the definitions demanded in the previous sen- tence. Cf. the repetition of this statement below at 28b, 8 ' as we saw, sensible things, apprehensible by belief together with sensation, are things that come to be and can be generated ’.
2 koXov, ‘ good \ ‘ satisfactory as at Gen. i. 8, ‘ God saw that it was good * (cTScv 6 Bcos on koXov, LXX) . The Greek word means also ‘ desirable
* beautiful ', and will be sometimes so translated.
8 4 Heaven ' (ovpavos) is used throughout the dialogue as a synonym of cosmos, the entire world, not the sky.
22
NATURE AND SCOPE OF PHYSICS
29. its maker is good, clearly he looked to the eternal ; on the contrary supposition (which cannot be spoken without blasphemy), to that which has come to be. Everyone, then, must see that he looked to the eternal ; for the world is the best of things that have become, and he is the best of causes. Having come to be, then, in this way, the world has been fashioned on the model of that which is compre- hensible by rational discourse and understanding and is always in the same state.
B. Again, these things being so,1 our world must necessarily be a likeness of something. Now in every matter it is of great moment to start at the right point in accordance with the nature of the subject. Concerning a likeness, then, and its model we must make this distinction : an account is of the same order 2 as the things which it sets forth — an account of that which is abiding and stable and discoverable by the aid of reason will itself be abiding and unchangeable (so far as it is possible and it lies in the nature of an account to be incontrovertible and irrefutable, there must be no falling
c. short of that) ; 3 while an account of what is made in the image of that other, but is only a likeness, will itself be but likely, standing to accounts of the former kind in a propor- tion : as reality is to becoming, so is truth to belief. If then, Socrates, in many respects concerning many things — the gods and the generation of the universe — we prove unable to render an account at all points entirely consistent with itself and exact, you must not be surprised. If we can furnish accounts no less likely than any other, we must be content, remembering that I who speak and you my judges
D. are only human, and consequently it is fitting that we should, in these matters, accept the likely story and look for nothing further.
Socr. Excellent, Timaeus ; we must certainly accept it as you say. Your prelude we have found exceedingly accept- able ; so now go on to develope your main theme.
The chief point established in this prelude is that the visible world, of which an account is to be given, is a changing image or likeness (eikon) of an eternal model. It is a realm, not of being, but of becoming. The inference is that no account that we or
1 ‘ These things ' means the whole application to the world of the three foregoing premisses. There should be a full stop before tout cov 8c wrapxovrcov a8 as before toutou 8* vTrapxovros a$ at 30c, 2.
2 ovyycvrjs in this sense, 31 a, i.
8 Burnet's text. The uncertainty of the reading does not affect the sense.
23
BEING AND BECOMING 27c-29d
anyone else can give of it will ever be more than ' likely \ There can never be a final statement of exact truth about this changing object.
(i) Being and Becoming . The first premiss lays down the Platonic classification of existence into two orders. The higher is the realm of unchanging and eternal being possessed by the Platonic Forms. This contains the objects of rational understanding accom- panied by a rational account (/uera Aoyov), namely, the discursive arguments of mathematics and dialectic which yield a securely grounded apprehension of truth and reality.1 The lower realm contains 1 that which is always becoming ’, passing into existence, changing, and perishing, but never has real being. This is the world of things perceived by our senses. Sense-perception, as Proclus remarks (i, 249), is ' unreasoning ' in several ways. Sight tells us that an apple is red, smell, that it is fragrant, taste, that it is sweet ; judgment (not sense) tells us that it is an apple. If the sun looks to our eyes a foot in width, the reasoning which assures us that the sun is really larger than the earth will never make it look any bigger. Finally, sense can never apprehend what white- ness is ; sight is merely aware, by its own passive affection, that some object is white. The judgments we pass on objects of per- ception are also unreasoned. They can only state what is, at best, a fact when the judgment is made, though it may cease to be a fact when the object changes. The reason why can only be appre- hended by the higher faculty of understanding.
The application of this premiss tells us that the visible world — the object of physics, as distinct from mathematics and dialectic — belongs to the lower order of existence. As having a visible and tangible body, it is an object of perception and of judgments based on perception. Accordingly, it belongs to the realm of ' things that become and can be generated \ It is not eternal, but has a beginning or source of becoming.
The ambiguity of the word * becoming * (yivecng, yiyvsaOcu) gave rise to a controversy on the question whether Plato really meant, as he appears to mean, that the world had a beginning in time, (a) A thing comes into existence at some time, either suddenly or at the end of a process during which it has been developing (if it is a natural object that is bom and grows) or has been fashioned (if it is a thing made by a craftsman). This sense of the word corresponds to the notion of a cause imaged as a father who begets his offspring, or as a maker who fashions his product out of his
1 So at 5 ie rational understanding is ‘ always accompanied by a true account ' (del per aXrjdovs A 6yov) , whereas ' true opinion * can give no rational account of itself (is dAoyov).
24
BEING AND BECOMING
materials. The thing is not there at the beginning of the process ; it is there at the end : we can say ' it has become \ (b) To ' be-
come ' can also mean to be in process of change. The word is used of events that ‘ are happening ' ; or changes that are ‘ going on \ It is true that in such ‘ becoming * something new is always appear- ing, something old passing away ; but the process itself can be conceived as going on perpetually, without beginning or end. For this perpetual becoming the sort of cause needed is not a cause that will start the process at some moment and complete it at another, but a cause that can sustain the process and keep it going endlessly. For such a cause both the images, * father ' and ‘ maker ', are inappropriate. We should need rather to think of some ideal or end, constantly exercising a force of attraction, and perhaps of some impulse in the thing itself, constantly aspiring towards the ideal.
Which kind of becoming did Plato mean to attribute to the physical world ? On the surface, he speaks of becoming in the first sense, as if the ordered world came into existence at some time out of a previous state of disorder. It was made by a divine Craftsman, and completed once for all ( djioreXetodat , 28b, i). The question is immediately prejudged where he simply substitutes for the cause of becoming, mentioned in the second premiss, the maker, mentioned in the third. We may compare the division of production in the Sophist (265B) into the two kinds, divine and human. Is the coming into being of natural things out of not- being to be attributed to divine craftsmanship (1 Oeov drjfiLovgyovvrog) , ' a causation which, working with reason and art, is divine and proceeds from divinity *, or to 4 Nature, giving birth to them as a result of some spontaneous cause that generates without in- telligence ’ ? Both speakers accept the alternative of divine craftsmanship. The suggestion in either case is that the world had a beginning of existence in time. The only question is, whether it was made upon a divine plan or grew by some blind spontaneous impulse. Similarly in the Philebus (26E) we hear that all things that become must have some cause (airta), and this is immediately identified with * the maker 1 (to noiovv) ; ‘ what becomes * and * what is made * are two names for one thing. As in the Timaeus , the Craftsman (to drjfuovgyovv) is substituted as the equivalent of ‘ the maker ' and of ‘ the cause * ; and later (28D) this cause is said to be Intelligence, the King of Heaven and Earth.
On the other hand, the statement that the world ' has become ' in this sense is formally contradicted by the language of the first premiss, which contrasts with the eternally real ' that which is always becoming, but never has real being \ This phrase can only
25
THE CAUSE OF BECOMING 27c-29d
mean what ' becomes 1 in the second sense, what is everlastingly in process of change. The application of the premiss to the visible world must mean that the world belongs to the lower order of existence so described. This is clear from the reason Plato gives for saying that the world * has become ' : * for it is visible and tangible and has a body and all such things are sensible/ and what is sensible belongs to the lower order, in contrast with the realm of eternal being. Modem authorities, accordingly, agree with Proclus, who contrasts the undivided and eternal being of the intelligible, which is not in time, with the everlasting existence in time of the world. The phrase ' it has become 1 he understands as meaning that the world possesses 1 the existence that is measured by time ', a derivative and dependent existence which is not self-sufficing. In this matter Proclus was following the main tradition of the Academy, from Xenocrates, Plato’s second successor, onwards.1 Speaking of contemporaries at the Academy, Aristotle writes : ‘ They say that in describing the generation of the world they are doing as a geometer does in constructing a figure, not implying that the universe ever really came into existence, but for purposes of exposition facilitating understanding by exhibiting the object, like the figure, in process of formation ’ [decaelo, 279 b, 33). Professor Taylor finds that ' apparently this tradition was steadily main- tained by almost all the Platonists down to the time of Plotinus (in the third century a.d.). Proclus mentions only two dissentients, Plutarch himself and Atticus, an acute and learned Platonist of the age of the Antonines.’ Though Aristotle chose to criticise Plato's statement in its apparently literal meaning, his colleague Theophrastus recorded the Academic interpretation as at least possible.2 This question is, of course, bound up with the question whether the Demiurge, as such, is mythical. If he was not really a ‘ maker then there was no moment of creation. We shall presently argue in support of this position. For the present we may accept the Academic tradition.
(2) The Cause of Becoming . It follows that the ' cause ' of this becoming must be a perpetually sustaining cause. The application of the second premiss merely states that the maker and father of the universe is hard to find and impossible to declare to all men. Plato, in fact, does not pretend to have solved the mystery of the universe ; and had he done so, he would not (as the Seventh Letter declares) have set down the solution in writing for all men to read
1 The evidence is collected by Tr., p. 67.
* See Tr., p. 69, note. Add the testimony of Albinus (' Alcinous ') : * When Plato speaks of the world as “ generated ”, it is not to be understood that there ever was a time when the world did not exist' (Didasc., ch. xiv).
26
MODEL AND COPY
and misunderstand. He was certain that the visible world ex- hibited the working of a divine intelligence aiming at what is good, and he held it to be of the utmost importance for the conduct of human life that this should be believed. The truth is best con- veyed by the image of the divine maker, pictured as distinct (like the human craftsman) from his model, his materials, and his work. But he here warns us not to imagine that, in using this image, he has declared the true nature of the cause. It is to be taken, not literally, but as a poetical figure. The whole subsequent account of the world is cast in a mould which this figure dictates. What is really an analysis of the elements of rational order in the visible universe and of those other elements on which order is imposed, is presented in mythical form as the story of a creation in time. Plato had used a similar device in the Republic , where the analysis of the ideal State is cast into the form of a history, starting from the barest necessities of social life and adding storey upon storey to the fabric. He did not mean that any actual state ever came into existence by these stages. What the sustaining cause is, Plato does not tell us and could not tell us without stepping outside the framework of the very myth he is constructing.1 This question, again, must be held in reserve till we have considered the status of the Demiurge.
(3) Model and copy. The third premiss and its application develope further the image of the craftsman and his model. If a craftsman copies an eternal model, his work will be good ; if the model is a generated thing, it will not be so. The reference is to Republic x, where the good type of craftsman is the carpenter who makes an actual bed, taking for his model * the real bed ’ — a Form which he does not create or invent, but which exists in the nature of things. The bad type is the painter who takes a generated thing, the carpenter's bed, for his model, and produces only an appearance of a thing which itself is not wholly real, an image of an image. The same analogy is drawn in the Sophist , 265. The * divine production of originals ' (the contents of the visible world, made by the Demiurge in the Timaeus) is parallel to the human craftsmanship which builds an actual house. In nature there are also dream-images, shadows, reflections, parallel to the painter's
1 Tr. here outruns Plato's exposition : ' The physical world, then, has a maker. . . . This means, exactly as the dogma of creation does in Christian theology, that the physical world does not exist in its own right, but depends on a really self-existing being, the “ best tpvxrf ", God, for its existence.' I am not theologian enough to know what the orthodox interpretation of the dogma of creation is; but myriads of Jews and Christians, from Moses to the present day, have believed that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and have understood ‘ beginning ’ in a temporal sense.
27
PHYSICS A 1 LIKELY STORY' 27c-29d
picture of a house, * a man-made dream for waking eyes.' In the application here it is argued that, since the visible world is, in fact, good, its maker must have copied a model that is eternal. The world, then, is a copy, an image, of the real. It is not, indeed, like an artist's painting, at the third remove from reality ; but on the other hand it is not wholly real. Plato will return to consider the nature of the model at 30c.
Physics only a ' likely story \ Hence follows the conclusion in the last paragraph : the visible world being only a likeness of the real, no account of it can be more than a likely story.
Here it is important to observe that the statement that the world is an image or likeness is independent of the symbolism of the Demiurge creating his work after a model. Not all images are made by artists. Among likenesses, Plato often instances reflec- tions in water or in a mirror. For these all that is required is the thing reflected, the reflection, and the medium which holds it. If the world is an image of that sort, we can dispense with the maker in any literal sense. The realm of Forms will be the original, the visible world the reflection ; and the medium will be that Recep- tacle of becoming which is later provided. We shall, in fact, find in the second part of the dialogue that the three factors needed are Being, Becoming, and Space (52D), and the symbol of the father is there transferred to Being, which serves as the model for Be- coming (50D), as if the Forms themselves could be credited with the power to beget Becoming in the womb of Space, or to cast their reflections on that medium. It is true that this symbolism again cannot be taken literally : the Forms can possess no gener- ating power. There must also be a rational soul to cause motion. But, however this moving cause may be mythically represented, the conclusion that the visible world is an image of the eternal remains. It is supported by many passages in other dialogues which are not mythical in form. It is, indeed, the cardinal doctrine of Platonism.
The doctrine carries with it the conclusion that since the world is only a likeness of the real, any account of it can be no more than a ' likely ' story. This means that there can be no exact, or even self-consistent, science of Nature. The view is characteristically Platonic. There is no evidence that any of the earlier Pythagoreans doubted the possibility of physical science. On the contrary, Aristotle says that they did not distinguish sensible bodies from the solids of mathematics, as if they agreed with the physical philosophers in general that the visible world is the real.1 In fact,
1 Met. 989 b, 29 ff. This is one of many grounds for rejecting the thesis that the Timaeus is merely reproducing fifth-century Pythagoreanism.
28
PHYSICS A * LIKELY STORY'
they ignored the distinction here drawn by Plato between the field of eternal truth, which includes mathematics, and the region of physics.
In Plato's view there can be no exact science or knowledge of natural things because they are always changing.1 The objects of mathematical science are timeless and invariable ; the things of sense are always in process of becoming. An ' account ' must be of the same order as its objects. The objects of physics are of the lower order, apprehensible only by belief involving sense- perception. The substance of our account of them must be related to truth in the same way as Becoming to Being — the relation of a * likeness ' to reality. This analogy was symbolised in Republic vi by the Divided Line, of which the lower part stands for belief (66£a or jiurcLg) and its changing objects, the higher part for rational understanding and true reality. There is, accordingly, no such thing as a science of Nature, no exact truth to which our account of physical things can ever hope to approximate.
I here differ from Professor Taylor, who says that the cosmology of the Timaeus ‘ properly speaking is not “ science ” but “ myth ", lot in the sense that it is baseless fiction, but in the sense that it is he nearest approximation which can “ provisionally " be made to exact ruth ' (p. 59, my italics). Things which change or move or grow ire always ‘ turning out to be more or less than we had supposed :hem to be ', and so, in all the natural sciences, we need * to be perpet- aally revising and improving on the results ' we have reached about them. * Physical “ laws " are always being revised and “ correc- ted " in the light of newly discovered " facts " or of more accurate measurements of “ facts " which were already familiar.' This is a modernism. It implies that there is an exact truth in physics, to which we can constantly approximate. Plato denies this. The becoming which makes physical things unknowable cannot be reduced to their * turning out to be more or less than we had sup- posed '. A similar confusion is suggested by Burnet's account of the Timaeus {Greek Phil, i, 340) : Our account of the world ‘ will jbe truth in the making, just as the sensible world is the intelligible vorld in the making '. The phrase ‘ in the making ' suggests that he sensible world is on the way to become, and might end by •ecoming, the intelligible world, and similarly that our accounts >f it are on the way to become, and might end by becoming, truth. The one result is as impossible as the other.
1 Aristotle, Met. a, 6 : ‘ Plato, having in his youth become familiar with 'ratylus and with the Heraclitean doctrine that all sensible things are ver in a state of flux and there is no knowledge about them, continued to old these views in later years.'
P.C.
29
D
PLAN OF THE DISCOURSE
27c-29d
Some have regarded the mythical character of the dialogue as a 4 veil of allegory which can be 4 stripped off and have imagined that they could state in literal terms the meaning which Plato has chosen to disguise. It is true that we can say, with a fair degree of certainty, that some features are not to be taken literally. We shall soon find reason to say this much of the Demiurge. But there remains an irreducible element of poetry, which refuses to be translated into the language of scientific prose. Plato declares that his account, so far from being exact, cannot even be consistent with itself. The inexactness and inconsistency are inherent in the nature of the subject ; they cannot be removed by 4 stripping off the veil of allegory \ An allegory, like a cypher, has a key ; the Pilgrim's Progress can be retranslated into the terms of Bunyan’s theology. But there is no key to poetry or myth.
Plan of the Discourse . The discourse on the nature of the universe and of man which now begins and continues without interruption to the end of the dialogue, is divided into three main sections.
(1) The first (29D-47E) is described as containing the works of Reason (ra dta Nov dedrjjutovQyrj/ueva, 47E), those elements in the visible world, and especially in the heavens, which most clearly manifest an intelligent and intelligible design. Here Plato ap- proaches the world (so to say) from above, from the realm of the benevolent maker and the Forms which provide his model. The Demiurge himself is responsible for the main structure and ordered movements of the world’s soul and body, and for the creation of the heavenly gods : stars, planets, and Earth. These created gods are then associated in the task of fashioning mankind and the other animals. A preliminary account of the human soul, disordered at its incarnation by the assaults of the material world, leads to the physical mechanism of sense-perception. This is contrasted with the rational purpose of sight and hearing, as revealing the order and harmony which our souls need to relearn and re-establish in themselves. The physical process whereby light acts upon the eyes or sound upon the hearing is a secondary and subordinate type of causation, the means by which the true purpose is attained. Such causation is connected with the notion of Necessity, as opposed to Reason.
(2) The second section (47E-69A) contains 4 what comes about of Necessity ’ (ra <5 1’ ’ Avayxrjg yiyvofteva, 47E). Making a fresh start, the discourse plunges into the obscure region of the bodily and of blind causation, approaching the world this time from below. A new factor, Space, is introduced, as the necessary condition or medium in which Becoming images reality. The unlimited and
32
THE MOTIVE OF CREATION
unordered qualities and powers of the bodily are pictured as a chaos. The Demiurge imposes upon them a rational element of geometrical form in the shapes of the four primary bodies. The properties of these regular figures are then connected with certain qualities in the sensations we receive ; and so, from the opposite pole, we return to the point of contact between the human organism and the outer world, where the first part ended.
(3) In the third section (69A-end), the two strands of rational purpose and necessity are woven together in a more detailed account of the human frame, the working of its organs, and the disorders of body and soul.
I. THE WORKS OF REASON 29D-30C. The motive of creation
Foreshadowing the contrast between rational purpose and the blind operation of Necessity, Plato opens with the creator’s motive, the true reason (atria) for the existence of an ordered world in the realm of Becoming.
29D. Tim. Let us, then, state for what reason becoming and E. this universe were framed by him who framed them. He was good ; and in the good no jealousy in any matter can ever arise. So, being without jealousy, he desired that all things should come as near as possible to being like himself. That this is the supremely valid principle of becoming and of the order of the world, we shall most surely be right to 30. accept from men of understanding. Desiring, then, that all things should be good and, so far as might be, nothing imperfect, the god took over all that is visible — not at rest, but in discordant and unordered motion — and brought it from disorder into order, since he judged that order was in every way the better.
Now it was not, nor can it ever be, permitted that the work of the supremely good should be anything but that which b. is best. Taking thought, therefore, he found that, among things that are by nature visible, no work that is without intelligence will ever be better than one that has intelligence, when each is taken as a whole, and moreover that intelligence cannot be present in anything apart from soul. In virtue of this reasoning, when he framed the universe, he fashioned reason within soul and soul within body, to the end that the work he accomplished might be by nature as excellent and 33
THE DEMIURGE
29d-30c
30B. perfect as possible. This, then, is how we must say, accord- ' ing to the likely account, that this world came to be, by the god’s providence, in very truth 1 a living creature with
c. soul and reason.
The Demiurge . The dialogue yields no more information about the Demiurge than is conveyed in this passage. Here, then, we may take up the question, how far this figure is mythical and what it really stands for. The temptation to read into Plato’s words modem ideas that are in fact foreign to his thought has proved too much for some commentators.
Plato is introducing into philosophy for the first time the image of a creator god. Recalling the punishment inflicted by jealous Olympians upon Prometheus for his benefits to mankind, he denies, as he had done before,2 the current notion that the gods grudge to man a perfection and felicity like their own. The kernel of Plato’s ethics is the doctrine that man’s reason is divine and that his business is to become like the divine by reproducing in his own nature the beauty and harmony revealed in the cosmos, which is itself a god, a living creature with soul in body and reason in soul, as here described. Hence he repudiates the old maxim warning man not to provoke nemesis by harbouring aspirations too high for mortals. Near the end of the dialogue he explicitly enjoins the duty of ' thinking thoughts immortal and divine ’ and endeavouring ‘ to possess immortality in the fullest measure that human nature permits ’ (90c). By calling the Demiurge ungrudg- ing, he may also imply that the imperfection of the world is due to Necessity, not to the deliberate withholding of any excellence that it might possess:
This is all that is meant by the statement, in the first paragraph, that the god is not jealous or grudging. The reader must be warned against importations from later theology. Professor Taylor, for instance, after pointing out that Timaeus is thinking of the common Greek view that the divine (to Oelov) is grudging in its bestowal of good things, proceeds : ‘ So just because God is good, He does not keep His blessedness selfishly to Himself. He seeks to make something else as much like Himself in goodness. It is of the very nature of goodness and love to “ overflow ”. This is why there is a world and why, with all its defects, it is “ very good ” ’ (p. 78). If this is intended as a paraphrase of Plato’s words, it is misleading. There is, in the first place, no justification for the suggestion,
1 It is literally true (not merely ‘ probable ') that the world is an intelligent living creature.
a Pkaedrus 247A, <f>6ovos yap cfco Octov x°P°G lorarcu.
34
THE DEMIURGE
conveyed by 4 God ’ with a capital letter, that Plato was a mono- theist. He believed in the divinity of the world as a whole and of the heavenly bodies. The Epinomis recommends the institution of a cult of these celestial gods. Neither in the Timaeus nor anywhere else is it suggested that the Demiurge should be an object of worship : he is not a religious figure.1 He must, therefore, not be equated with the one God of the Bible, who created the world out of nothing and is also the supreme object of worship.2 Still less is there the slightest warrant in Greek thought of the pre- Christian centuries for the notion of 4 overflowing love *, or love of any kind, prompting a god to make a world. It is not fair either to Plato or to the New Testament to ascribe the most characteristic revelations of the Founder of Christianity to a pagan polytheist.
The nature and position of the Demiurge cannot be finally determined without considering that central utterance of the whole dialogue which declares that the universe is produced by a combina- tion of Reason and Necessity : 4 Reason overruled Necessity by persuading her to guide the greatest part of the things that become towards what is best ' (48A). When we come to that passage, we shall ask what Necessity stands for, how Necessity can be 4 per- suaded * by Reason, and why she should need to be persuaded. Further on still (520), we shall find a more detailed picture of that chaos of disorderly motions and powers which the Demiurge has just been described as 4 taking over ' and reducing, so far as may be, to order. Necessity and chaos are represented as factors in the visible world which confront the divine intelligence, like the given materials which the human craftsman must use as best he can, though their properties may not be wholly suitable to his purpose. It will be argued that this second factor in the world
1 The ‘ Maker ’ in some primitive mythologies has been similarly mis- interpreted. Professor Nilsson writes : * Just as man arranges matters
as conveniently as he can to suit his simple needs, building a hut and making his few tools, and just as the advance of culture is brought about by culture-heroes, so, it is said, there was at the beginning of time some one, though much more powerful than man, who arranged the world as con- veniently as possible to supply man with all that he needed. This creator, who is found among many primitive peoples, is called by the Australians characteristically enough “the Maker “ (Baiame). He has also fixed the customs and institutions of the tribe. At first sight it would seem as though we had here a highly developed monotheistic type of divinity, but the idea is in reality due to the indolence of primitive habits of thought. The creator is a mythological, not a religious divinity ; and, therefore, he has no cult and no one troubles about him' ( A History of Greek Religion, 1925* P* 72).
2 The contrast between the Demiurge and the Christian Creator is developed in an interesting paper by Mr. M. B. Foster on Christian Theology and Modern Science of Nature, Mind XLIV, 439 ff. and XLV, 1 ff.
35
" THE DEMIURGE
29d-30c
must not be explained away so as to give Plato's Demiurge the status of the omnipotent Creator of Jewish-Christian theology. We shall find that if Plato's language is to keep any substantial meaning, we must not ascribe to him either the belief in an omni- potent creator or the notion of natural law as a closed system of causes and effects. His Necessity is irregular and disorderly, and not inexorably determined, but open to the persuasion of Reason ; and Reason has need to persuade her, not having unlimited power to compel. This is not easy for us to understand ; but there is no need to explain it away. The omnipotent Creator and the modem notion of natural law were equally foreign to the minds of ancient Greece. Galen truly observed that, with respect to omnipotence, ' the doctrine of Moses differed from that of Plato and of all the Greeks who have correctly approached the study of Nature. For Moses, God has only to will to bring matter into order, and matter is ordered immediately. We do not think in that way ; we say that certain things are impossible by nature and these God does not even attempt ; he only chooses the best among the things that come about ' (U.P. xi, 14). To this I would add a quotation from Professor G. C. Field.1 He points out that omnipotence is incompatible with the ordinary and familiar notion of purpose, which we never regard as a complete and sufficient explanation of anything : ' it is always purpose working in certain materials, or under certain conditions, which make it intelligible why this had to be done rather than that in order to fulfil the purpose '. He concludes that the appeal to purpose as a satisfying principle of explanation ' cannot claim to be decisively established, and if it points to anything, it points in the direction of a God or a Highest Purpose working in a universe which includes him as a part only of the whole, and a part which, however powerful and important, is at some point limited and restricted by other elements in the whole. I do not myself see any insuperable philosophic objection to such an idea. It appealed, if I interpret him aright, to Plato, in the final development of his doctrine.'
This conclusion is unquestionably consistent with what Plato actually says. Again and again, throughout the Timaeus, we are told that the benevolent Demiurge designed that such and such an arrangement should be ' as good as possible ', with the clear implica- tion that his purpose was restricted by that other factor called Necessity. We must accept this, on pain of reducing much of his language to nonsense. There is nothing against it, except the desire to bring Plato into conformity with Christian doctrine or
1 From an interesting essay on Modern Proofs of the Existence of God in Studies in Philosophy (1935), pp- 122 ff.
36
THE DEMIURGE
with some modem form of idealism. If this desire is brought into consciousness, it can be resisted ; for to yield to it is to do Plato no service. If we make his Demiurge omnipotent and at the same time attribute to him the modem conception of natural law, we shall involve him in the nineteenth-century ‘ conflict of religion and science ' ; for this arose largely out of the attempt to believe at once in the providence of an all-powerful God and in a completely determined chain of causes and effects which left no room for his intervention.
Here, then, we may conclude that Plato's Demiurge, like the human craftsman in whose image he is conceived, operates upon materials which he does not create, and whose inherent nature sets a limit to his desire for perfection in his work. He has been pictured as confronted with ' all that is visible ' in a chaos of dis- orderly motion. For this disorder he is not responsible, but only for those features of order and intelligible design which he proceeds to introduce, ' so far as he can \ These form the subject of the first part of the discourse. In the second part it will be made clear that the Demiurge is not the sole cause of Becoming. There are secondary causes, partly but not wholly amenable to the per- suasion of Reason. Nor does the Demiurge create that Receptacle of Becoming in which the images of the Forms are mirrored. This is not mentioned among the works of Reason ; it is as independent of the Demiurge as the world of Forms. The Forms, again, he does not create ; they are not made or generated, but eternally real and self-subsisting. The function of the Demiurge is to contribute an element of order to Becoming, because an ordered world will be more * like himself ', that is to say, better, than a disorderly one.
We shall be led to the conclusion that both the Demiurge and chaos are symbols : neither is to be taken quite literally, yet both stand for real elements in the world as it exists. If there was never a moment of creation, chaos cannot have existed before that moment ; and this part of the mythical imagery is not to be taken at its face value. But what was later called ‘ matter ' is the subject of the second part of the dialogue, not to be anticipated here. We can only remark that chaos, if it never existed before cosmos, must stand for some element that is now and always present in the working of the universe. Its nature will be disclosed in the analysis of ' what comes about of Necessity \1
1 Against Plutarch and Atticus, who took the pre-existing chaos literally, Proclus (i, 382) cites Porphyry and Iamblichus : * They say that Plato, desiring to exhibit the Maker’s providence descending into the universe, the government of reason and the presence of soul, and all the great benefits
37
THE DEMIURGE
29d-30c
It may equally be said of the Demiurge that, as a mythical symbol, he must stand for something that is seriously meant. He is mythical in that he is not really a creator god, distinct from the universe he is represented as making. He is never spoken of as a possible object of worship ; and in the third part of the dialogue the distinction between the Demiurge and the celestial gods, whom he makes and charges with the continuation of his work, is obliter- ated.1 The evidences, of design in the human frame are there attributed sometimes to ' the god sometimes to the celestial gods, who are the stars, planets, and Earth. On the other hand, there is no doubt that he stands for a divine Reason working for ends that are good. The whole purpose of the Timaeus is to teach men to regard the universe as revealing the operation of such a Reason, not as the fortuitous outcome of blind and aimless bodily motions. If this Reason is not a creator god, standing apart from his model and materials, where is it to be found ? Now this is precisely the question which Plato has refused to answer. It is a hard task, he says, to find the maker and father of this universe, and having found him it would be impossible to declare him to all mankind. This can only mean that the mythical imagery is not a ' veil of allegory 1 that we can tear aside and be sure of dis- covering behind it a literal meaning which Plato himself would endorse. Commentators have not hesitated to essay this ‘ im- possible ' task ; but the bewildering variety of their disclosures lends little encouragement for a further venture, and gives rise to a suspicion that each has found what he set out to look for.
We shall be on safer ground if we turn from the maker to con- sider what Plato says here about his work. The visible universe is a living creature, having soul (ywxtf) in body and reason (vovg) in soul. It is called a god (34B) in the same sense in which the term is applied to the stars, planets, and Earth — the 1 heavenly gods \ All these gods are everlasting, coeval with time itself ; though theoretically dissoluble, because composite of reason, soul, and body, they will never actually be dissolved (41B). Man is also composed of reason, soul, and body ; but his body will be dissolved
these confer upon the cosmos, first contemplates the whole bodily frame by itself in its disharmony and disorder, so that you may see also by itself the order due to soul and to the disposition of the creator, and distinguish the nature of the bodily in itself from the nature of the created order. The cosmos itself exists everlastingly ; but the discourse distinguishes that which becomes from its maker and introduces in temporal order things that coexist simultaneously, because whatsoever is generated is composite/
1 On one such passage Tr. says : ‘ Passages like the present show how far he is from meaning his polytheistic phrases to be taken au pied de la lettre * (p. 549). Substitute ‘ monotheistic \ and the remark will be equally true.
38
THE CREATOR’S MODEL
back into the elements, and the two lower parts of his soul are also mortal. Only the divine reason in him is imperishable. There is thus a contrast between macrocosm and microcosm, but also an analogy, which runs all through the discourse. The world itself, like the heavenly gods and man, is divine because it contains the divine element, reason. Reason, moreover, as Plato says here and elsewhere, ' cannot be present in anything apart from soul ' : if it is ‘ present ’ in the body of the universe and in man’s body, that body must be alive, endowed with soul, which is defined in the Laws and the Phaedrus as the self-moving source of all motion. The statement is consistent with the belief that the reason, as divine and immortal, can nevertheless exist in separation from the body and divested of the mortal parts of soul. There is, then, in the soul and body of the universe a divine Reason analogous to man’s ; and we shall find that the unchanging movement of its thought is symbolised, or even visibly embodied, in the circular revolutions of the heavenly gods and of the universe as a whole.
We may ask how this divine Reason in the world is related to that divine Reason which is symbolised by the Demiurge. Can we simply identify the two ? In that case the Demiurge will no longer stand for anything distinct from the world he is represented as making. The desire for goodness will then reside in the World- Soul : the universe will aspire towards the perfection of its model in the realm of Forms, and the model will hold a position analogous to that of Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, who causes motion as the object of desire.1 But this solution of the problem is no more warranted by Plato himself than others that can be supported by a suitable selection of texts. We shall do better to hold back from this or any other conclusion and confine our attention to the world with its body and soul and the reason they contain.
30C-31A. The creator's model
The visible world has been declared to be a living creature made after the likeness of an eternal original. This model is now further described. It can only be the ideal Living Creature in the world of Forms, not to be identified with any species of animate being, but embracing the ideal types of all such species, ‘ all the intelligible living creatures '.
30c. This being premised, we have now to state what follows next : What was the living creature in whose likeness he
1 It has been observed that Aristotle's personified Nature, who aims at a purpose and does nothing in vain, may be regarded as equivalent to Plato's Demiurge.
39
THE CREATOR'S MODEL 30c-31a
30c. framed the world ? We must not suppose that it was any creature that ranks only as a species 1 ; for no copy of that which is incomplete can ever be good. Let us Tather say that the world is like, above all things, to that Living Creature of which all other living creatures, severally and in their families, are parts. For that embraces and contains within
D. itself all the intelligible living creatures, just as this world contains ourselves and all other creatures that have been formed as things visible. For the god, wishing to make this world most nearly like that intelligible thing which is best and in every way complete, fashioned it as a single visible living creature, containing within itself all living 31. things whose nature is of the same order.
We have seen that, although the creator god, as such, is a mythical figure, the relation of likeness to model none the less subsists between the visible world and the intelligible. The model is not a piece of mythical machinery. The visible world, being ‘ in very truth ’ a living creature with soul and body, has for its original a complex Form, or system of Forms, called ‘ the intelligible Living Creature \ This is a generic Form containing within itself the Forms of all the subordinate species, members of which inhabit the visible world. The four main families,2 * contained in the Living Creature that truly is ’, are enumerated at 39E : the heavenly gods (stars, planets, and Earth), the birds of the air, the fishes of the sea, and the animals which move on the dry land. These main types, as well as the indivisible species of living creatures and their specific differences, are all, in Platonic terms, ‘ parts ’ into which the generic Form of Living Creature can be divided by the dialectical procedure of Division (dtacQeaig). The generic Form must be con- ceived, not as a bare abstraction obtained by leaving out all the specific differences determining the subordinate species, but as a whole, richer in content than any of the parts it contains and embraces.3 It is an eternal and unchanging object of thought, not itself a living creature, any more than the Form of Man is a man. It is not a soul, nor has it a body or any existence in space or time. Its eternal being is in the realm of Forms.
Plato does not say, here or elsewhere, that this generic Form of Living Creature contains anything more than all the subordinate generic and specific Forms and differences that would appear in
or popiov, ‘ part is Plato's normal term for ‘ species
8 This is the probable meaning of yevrj in ko.6 * cv teal Kara y4vrj (30A, 6) ; Kaff Iv wiU mean the Forms of indivisible species, a class of Forms explicitly recognised at Philebus, 15A.
8 Cf. F. M. Cornford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge (1935) , pp. 268 ff.
40
ONE WORLD, NOT MANY
the complete definitions of all the species of living creatures existing in our world, including the created gods. We have no warrant for identifying it with the entire system of Forms, or with the Form of the Good in the Republic , or for supposing that it includes the moral Forms of dialectic or the mathematical Forms, or even the Forms of the four primary bodies, whose existence is specially affirmed at 51 b ff. Plato looks upon the whole visible universe as an animate being whose parts are also animate beings. The intelligible Living Creature corresponds to it, whole to whole, and part to part. It is the system of Forms that are, together with the Forms of the four primary bodies, relevant to a physical dis- course, because they are the patterns of which the things we see and touch are sensible images, coming to be and passing away in time and space. We are not here concerned with the moral Forms, of which there are no sensible images (Phaedrus 250D).
The model, as strictly eternal, is independent of the Demiurge, whose function is to be the cause, not of eternal Being, but only of order in the realm of Becoming. However we may interpret the divine Reason symbolised by the Demiurge, this model is one among the objects of its thought. It is the ideal, whose perfection the visible universe, as a living being, is to reproduce in its own structure, so far as is permitted by the conditions of temporal existence in space. 4 Intelligible * means that it is an object of rational thought, divine or human. Plato gives no more ground for supposing that the divine Reason creates its objects by ‘ think- ing ' them than for supposing that our own reasons create these same objects when we think of them. The Forms are always spoken of as existing eternally in their own right.
31A-B. One world , not many
The concluding words of the last paragraph spoke of the world as a single living creature. This suggests the possibility that there should be more than one copy of the model — a plurality of visible worlds.
31A. Have we, then, been right to call it one Heaven, or would it have been true rather to speak of many and indeed of an indefinite number ? One we must call it, if we are to hold that it was made according to its pattern. For that which embraces 1 all the intelligible living creatures that there are, cannot be one of a pair ; for then there would have to be
1 TT^pUx^iv is used of the whole which * includes ' all its parts, e.g. Soph . 2 5 3D. This use has nothing to do with the Ionian use of 7 rcpifyov for the element which extends beyond and ‘ encompasses * the world, referred to in Tr.’s note.
41
ONE WORLD, NOT MANY 31a-b
31A. yet another Living Creature embracing those two, and they would be parts of it ; and thus our world would be more truly described as a likeness, not of them, but of that other B. which would embrace them. Accordingly, to the end that this world may be like the complete Living Creature in respect of its uniqueness, for that reason its maker did not make two worlds nor yet an indefinite number ; but this Heaven has come to be and is and shall be hereafter one and unique.1
There is no satisfactory evidence for the doctrine of a plurality of coexisting worlds before the atomism of Leucippus in the second half of the fifth century.2 The Atomists’ belief in innumerable worlds, some always coming into existence, others passing away, was an inference from their assertion of a strictly infinite void partly occupied by an illimitable number of atoms in motion. It was probable, they argued, that world-forming vortices would arise at any number of different places. Granted that our world is finite, that there is unlimited space outside its boundary, and that there are materials left over, from which other worlds might be formed, why should there not be any number of copies of the same model ? The world, according to Plato, is finite. On the other hand, like Aristotle, he would have denied an unlimited void outside ; and he certainly denies that any materials are left over (32c ff.). The point, however, is not argued on those grounds here. He is not offering a proof that there cannot be more than one world ; he merely asserts that only one was made, because it seemed better that the copy should be unique, like the model. His argument is : (1) The model must be all-inclusive (navrekdg), containing all the species of animal that there are ; otherwise our world, being a copy of it, would not be as perfect as it might be. (2) There cannot be a second all-inclusive model ; for then the two models would be duplicate instances of the same Form, and that Form would become the true model. The model, therefore, is
1 I cannot see in yeyovajs Zonv nal «r* ecrrai any more than * has been and is and shall be ' or ‘ is at all times though the word yeyovats preserves the fiction of creation. Cf. 38c ycyova>s tc koX wv koX eaofxevos. Tr. dis- covers an allusion to a doctrine of y^ueais ctV ovalav in the Philebus, which ' Timaeus is not allowed to explain but only to imply because ‘ the clear conception of a ycyevrjutvr) ovaia is a result of Plato's own personal thought \ which a fifth-century Pythagorean has no business to know about. But the doctrine of the Philebus should not be read into this simple phrase. All the emphasis falls on ‘ one and unique ', as in Tr.’s translation : ‘ sole and single this our heaven came into being, sole it is, and sole it shall remain \
* I have discussed this question in detail in Classical Quarterly, XXVIII
(1934). pp- 1 ff-
42
THE WORLD’S BODY
(like every other Form) unique. (3) The last sentence does not say that there cannot be more than one copy of a unique model (which is obviously untrue),1 but that the creator made only one copy ‘ in order that ’ the world should resemble its model ‘ in respect of its uniqueness \ Uniqueness is a perfection, and the world is the better for possessing it. One reason why it is better is given later : if the world were not unique, there would be body left outside it, whose ' strong powers ’ might impair its life and even destroy it (33 a). It is for this reason that this world * having come into being one and unique, is and shall be so hereafter \ These final words deny both the innumerable coexisting worlds of the Atomists and the succession of single worlds which had figured in some Ionian systems and in Empedocles. Plato’s single world is everlasting.
THE BODY OF THE WORLD
31B-32C. Why this consists of four primary bodies The next section (31B-34A) is concerned with the body of the Universe. Although soul is later declared to be prior to body, the making of the body is taken first for convenience. The present paragraph explains why not less than four primary bodies — fire, air, water, earth — were required, in order to give it the highest measure of unity. This attribute of internal unity follows naturally after the unity, in the sense of uniqueness, asserted in the previous paragraph. The primary bodies are here imagined as materials ready to be ‘ put together ’ (awiaravai) by the builder’s hand. The formation of them by the imposition of regular geometrical shape upon their unordered motions and powers belongs to the second part of the dialogue. There is no reference here to those geometrical shapes, of which nothing has yet been heard. All that the Demiurge does now is to fix their quantities in a certain definite proportion. This is an element of rational design in the structure of the world’s body, and it belongs here among the works of Reason.
31B. Now that which comes to be 2 must be bodily, and so visible and tangible ; and nothing can be visible without fire, or
1 There is, accordingly, no ground for Tr/s accusation that Plato has ' con- fused the principle of the “ uniformity ” of nature with the assertion that there is only one “ stellar system " ' (p. 85).
2 If to yevofxevov means * the world which came into being * we should expect e8et, and perhaps r* ISet should be read for re Set (cf. Chalcidius, erat merito futurus and 32B artpeoeiBrj yap avrov 7rpoa^K€v chat, ). Pr. ii, 380 (lemma) has yiyvo^vov, which suits the present Bet. Contrast his paraphrase,
yap I8et tov Koap.ov ovra yevrjTov oparov etva t teal airrov (ii, 17T
43
THE WORLD'S BODY
31b-32c
31B. tangible without something solid,1 and nothing is solid with- out earth. Hence the god, when he began to put together the body of the universe, set about making it of fire and earth. But two things alone cannot be satisfactorily united
c. without a third ; for there must be some bond between them drawing them together. And of all bonds the best is that which makes itself and the terms it connects a unity in the fullest sense ; and it is of the nature of a continued geometrical proportion 2 to effect this most perfectly. For whenever, of 32. three numbers, the middle one between any two that are either solids (cubes ?) or squares 3 is such that, as the first is to it, so is it to the last, and conversely as the last is to the middle, so is the middle to the first, then since the middle becomes first and last, and again the last and first become middle, in that way all will necessarily come to play the same part towards one another, and by so doing they will all make a unity.
Now if it had been required that the body of the universe should be a plane surface with no depth, a single mean
b. would have been enough to connect its companions and itself ; but in fact the world was to be solid in form, and solids are always conjoined, not by one mean, but by two. Accordingly the god set water and air between fire and earth, and made them, so far as was possible, proportional to one another, so that 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 together the frame of a world visible and tangible.
For these reasons and from such constituents, four in
c. number, the body of the universe was brought into being, coming into concord by means of proportion, and from these it acquired Amity,4 so that coming into unity with
1 Solid, i.e. resistant to touch (Pr. ii, 12 ai).
2 That dvaXoyla means this type of proportion par excellence will be explained below.
8 The reason for taking the genitives eire oyKtov cit€ SwafJLetov (bvrivaivovv as depending on to fjUaov will be explained below (p. 47). Grammatically, the words can be construed : (1) ‘ Whenever of any three numbers, whether solids or squares, the middle one is such . . .* (So Heath, A.-H.), or (2) ‘ Whenever of any three numbers or solids or squares the middle one is such ' . . . , taking * numbers ’ to mean numbers that are neither squares nor solids.
4 A reference to the Philia of Empedocles’ system. But there is no contrary principle of Neikos in Plato's scheme, and hence no periodic destruction of the world. Cf. Gorg. 508 a : the wise say that heaven and earth, gods and men, are held together by and Koofuonjs — a truth which has escaped
Callicles because he has neglected geometry and not perceived the significance of geometrical proportion (1} Io6ttjs 1
44
THE WORLD'S BODY
32c. itself it became indissoluble by any other save him who bound it together,
Empedocles had taken the four elements as given fact ; Plato deduces the need of four primary and simple bodies by an argument. (1) There must be two (not one primary form of matter, as the Ionian monists had held), because fire is needed to make the world's body visible, earth to make it resistant to touch. Fire and earth had been commonly regarded as the two extreme elements, since fire belongs to the heavens, and air and water are between Heaven and Earth. (2) But two cannot hold together without a third to serve as bond. The three must be in proportion, and the most perfect bond is that proportion which makes the most perfect unity out of mean and extremes. (3) The most perfect type of pro- portion is the continued geometrical proportion ( avakoyia ), which Plato next proceeds to define. That geometrical proportion was the proportion par excellence and primary, all other types of pro- portion being derivable from it, was stated by Adrastus, the Peripatetic (early second century a.d.), who wrote a commentary on the Timaeus, parts of which are preserved byTheon of Smyrna.1 If we ignore for the moment the words ehe dyxcov elre dwa/aecov, which specify certain classes of numbers,2 the sentence simply gives a definition of a continued geometrical proportion with three terms. Take the progression 2, 4, 8 for purposes of illustration. The terms are related so that ‘ as the first is to the middle, so is the middle to the last (2:4 = 418), and conversely, as the last is to the middle, so is the middle to the first ' (814 = 4:2). Then ‘ the middle becomes first and last, and again the last and the first both become middle ’ (4 : 8 = 2 : 4 or 4 : 2 = 8 : 4). Thus any of the three can stand as first or as last or as middle, and the unity they constitute is as perfect as possible. (4) Three terms, how- ever, are not enough, because all the primary bodies are solids, and must accordingly be represented by solid numbers (a solid number
1 The statement is repeated by Nicomachus (Introd. Arith. ii, 24, p. 126 Hoche), by Iamblichus (in Nicom. Ay. Introd., p. 100 Pistelli, as ‘ an opinion of the ancients and p. 104 citing our passage), and by Pr. ii, 20 (referring to Nicomachus). Cf. Heath, Euclid, ii, 292. Pr. records the (obviously correct) view that Plato here speaks of geometrical proportion only. Others, with whom Proclus himself agrees, made an unfortunate attempt to drag in arithmetical and harmonic proportion, connected with the false notion that BvpdfjLcis in our passage has a physical sense, and means the sensible qualities elsewhere called ‘powers ’ (cf. Chalcid, p. 86, and Occelus, ii). Such qualities (pairs of opposites) form, in Plato's view, an dneipov, and could not possibly stand as terms in a numerical proportion.
2 These words are omitted by Tim. Locr. 95, who has simply rpuov d>vnva)vuiv
opcov.
P.C.
45
E
THE WORLD’S BODY 31b-32c
is the product of three numbers). To connect two plane numbers a single mean is sufficient ; but if fire and earth, the extremes, are to be connected, two means will be required.
As the ancients saw, this last statement is true only if the plane and solid numbers in question are ' similar ’ (i.e. having their sides proportional) — a class which includes all squares and cubes. Some held that Plato meant it to be taken for granted that the terms in his proportion are all similar numbers 1 ; but he has not said so. It has, accordingly, been inferred that the words she Syxcov she dwajuecov, which serve no purpose in a mere description of a geo- metrical proportion with three terms, were inserted in order to restrict the numbers in question to cubes and squares. Sir Thomas Heath writes : 2
' It is well-known that the mathematics of Plato’s Timaeus is essentially Pythagorean. It is therefore d priori probable (if not perhaps quite certain) that Plato nvOayoqi^ei even in the passage (32 A, b) where he speaks of numbers “ whether solid or square ” in continued proportion, and proceeds to say that between planes one mean suffices, but to connect two solids two means are necessary. This passage has been much discussed, but I think that by “ planes ” and 0 solids ” Plato certainly meant square and solid numbers respectively, so that the allusion must be to the theorems established in Eucl. viii, n, 12, that between two square numbers there is one mean proportional number and between two cube numbers there are two mean proportional numbers.’
In a note Heath adds :
* It is true that similar plane and solid numbers have the same property (Eucl. viii. 18, 19) ; but, if Plato had meant similar plane and solid numbers generally, I think it would have been necessary to specify that they were “ similar ”, whereas, seeing that the Timaeus is as a whole concerned with regular figures, there is nothing unnatural in allowing regular or equilateral to be understood. Further, Plato speaks first of dwa/ueig and oyxoi and then of " planes ” (inbieda) and “ solids ” (oreQed) in such a way as to suggest that dvvdfieig correspond to imneda and oyxoi to oteqed . Now the regular meaning of Svvafug is square (or sometimes square root), and I think it is here used in the sense of square , notwithstanding that Plato seems to speak of three squares in continued proportion, whereas, in general, the
1 See Pr. ii, 2918 and 33*° (quoting Democritus, the third-century Platonist) .
8 Thirteen Books of Euclid, ii, p. 294.
THE WORLD'S BODY
mean between two squares as extremes would not be square but oblong. And, if d'uvdjueig are squares, it is reasonable to suppose that the Syxoi are also equilateral, i.e. the " solids " are cubes/
Elsewhere 1 Heath writes :
* By planes and solids he- [Plato in this passage] really means square and cube numbers, and his remark is equivalent to stating that, if p 2, q 2 are two square numbers, p2:pq = pq: q\ while, if pzf qz are two cube numbers,
pz : p*q = p*q ; pq 2 = pq 2 : q*t
the means being of course in continued geometric proportion. Euclid proves the properties for square and cube numbers in viii. 11, 12 and for similar plane and solid numbers in viii. 18, 19. Nicomachus (ii. 24, 6, 7) quotes the substance of Plato's remark as a “ Platonic theorem ", adding in explanation the equivalent of Eucl. viii. 11, 12/
This interpretation of the ambiguous words oyxoi and as ‘ cubes ' and ‘ squares ' seems to be better supported than any other. It rules out the notion that oyxoi and dwa/ueig are alterna- tives to aqidfjioi They are subdivisions of ‘ numbers ', restricting the statement to cubes and squares, for the sake of the subsequent statement about one mean connecting squares, two means connecting cubes. The objection stated by Heath, that ‘ Plato seems to speak of three squares in continued proportion, whereas in general the mean between two squares as extremes would not be square but oblong ', can be obviated by construing the genitives sire dyxcov Eire dvvdjLiEcov (bvnvcovovv not (as is commonly done) as in apposi- tion to dgid/acov, but as depending on to [Jiioov. The effect is to make the limitation to cubes and squares apply only to the extremes. Here, as in many other places, Plato is compressing his statement of technical matters to such a point that only expert readers would fully appreciate his meaning.
The interpretation can be further supported by a consideration of Adrastus' treatment of geometrical proportion.2 He says that geometrical proportion is the only proportion in the full and proper sense (xvqicog) and the primary one, because all the others require
it, but it does not require them. The first ratio is equality
the element of all other ratios and of the proportions they yield. 1 Greek Mathematics , i. 89.
* Theon (p. 177, Dupuis) quotes the passage in full. It is presumably taken from Adrastus’ commentary on our passage.
47
THE WORLD’S BODY
31b~32c
He then derives a whole series of geometrical proportions from ‘ the proportion with equal terms * (i, i, i) according to the following law :
Given three terms in continued proportion, if you take three other terms formed of these, one equal to the first, another com- posed of the first and the second, and another composed of the first and twice the second and the third, these new terms will be in continued proportion.
In this manner, from the proportion with equal terms arises the double proportion, and from that the triple, and so on, as follows. Take the equal proportion with the smallest possible terms, i, i, i. Then take three terms according to the above rule :
I, 1 + 1 = 2, 1 + 2 + 1= 4-
This is the double proportion, i, 2, 4 . . . etc. Now take 1, 2, 4 and proceed in the same way :
1, 2 + 1 = 3, 1+4 + 4 = 9.
This is the triple proportion 1, 3, 9 . . . etc. By continuing the process we obtain :
1, 1, 1 1, 2, 4
+ 3> 9 1, 4, 16
L 5» 25 1, 6, 36
x> 1> 49 1, 8, 64 1, 9, 81 1, 10, 100
(Note that Adrastus stops at the perfect number 10. *) He then shows how the other, less perfect, kinds of proportion can be derived from these geometrical proportions.
The numbers in the third column are squares (dwa/xeig) , those in the second column are the roots of these squares. Square roots also were sometimes called dwafieig. The underlying notion seems to be that any number (represented by a line) has, in itself and without the aid of any other factor, the power of multiplying itself or generating its own square by advancing as far as its own length into the second dimension. Hence a line is said dvvaadai the square
1 Cf. Pr. i, 147, 17 iox&rr) npooSos rrjs Sc/caSos vn^onjoc rov
48
THE WORLD'S BODY
plane figure it thus generates.1 So the root number is the first * power ', dvvafug ; the corresponding line is properly called dwapidvr). Avvapug is more commonly applied to the square, in which this potency of the root is developed or deployed. Hence the square is the * second power \ The square contains the power that can be further deployed when the square advances into the third dimension and produces the .cube, or third power .2 If we now continue Adrastus' geometrical proportions, we shall next reach the cube. Taking the double and triple proportions, we have
i, 2, 4, 8 L 3> 9> 2 7
These are the two series that Plato takes later (35B) as the basis for the harmony of the World-Soul. Both series emanate from unity, in which all the ‘ powers ' concerned are conceived as gathered up. The series proceed through the first even, and the first odd, number to their squares and cubes. Plato's later use of these two progressions makes it probable that he had them in mind in our passage.3 He would certainly choose a progression of what was held to be the most perfect type.4
Nicomachus, in his chapter on continuous geometrical proportion (ii, 24), repeats that this is the only proportion in the most proper sense (xvQtcog xaXovfievrj) and gives the same examples : 4 the
numbers proceeding from unity according to the double proportion ' :
1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 . . . and the triple proportion :
1, 3, 9> 27>- 81, 243 . . .
and so on with the quadruple proportion, etc. He points out that the terms in these proportions have the properties Plato mentions, and later speaks of 4 the Platonic theorem, that the plane numbers
1 Plato, Theaet. 148B, 8uva//.€ts, ov avmilrpovs ckcIvclis, rots 8* «
a Svvavrai. Alex, in Met. 1019b, 32.
2 The Epinomis 990D calls cube numbers rovs rpls i]v(r)n evovs kcu Tjj orepeq. <f>vo€i ofiolovs . At Rep. 52 8b stereometry is described as concerned with ‘ cubic increase (kv^cjv a v&v) and that which has depth \ as if the cube were the primary solid. See Stenzel, Zahl u. Gestalt 89 ff.
3 Cf. also Epinomis 991 a. * The first progression of the double proceeds in the integer series (kut aptOpov) in the ratio 1:2; double is the ratio of their second powers (17 Kara Svvapuv) ; the progression of the solid and tangible is again a double, the progression from one to eight * (trans. Harward). This progression 1, 2, 4, 8 is then used to construct the musical scale.
4 It would not occur to the modern mathematician, who uses algebraic symbols, that one type of geometrical progression could be more perfect or better deserving of the name than another. For this reason algebraic symbols should not be employed in interpreting such a passage as ours.
49
THE WORLD’S BODY 31b-32c
are held together by one mean, the solids by two standing in pro- portion : for between two consecutive squares will be found only one mean preserving the geometrical proportion . . , and between two consecutive cubes only two \
This is true of all proportions of the above pattern : e.g.
|
root |
square |
cube |
square |
solid |
J square \ cube |
solid |
square |
cube |
|
2 |
4 |
8 |
16 |
32 |
64 |
128 |
256 |
512. . |
|
(2*) |
(2») |
(4s) |
(8») (48) |
(16’) |
(8») |
The special points of this pattern are : (i) All the plane numbers are squares ; there are no oblongs. Oblongs, such as 6 (2 X 3) appear only in geometrical progressions of a less perfect kind (e.g. 4 : 6 = 6 : 9), which do not proceed by the self -multiplication of a single root number, but involve a second root. Also such pro- gressions cannot be continued to four and more terms without introducing fractions. If Plato had the perfect pattern in mind, he could substitute 4 plane ' for 4 square \ as he does. Each two successive planes (squares) are connected by a single mean. (2) All the numbers which are not squares are solid ; and each two successive cubes are connected by two means. If dyxoc does mean 4 cubes then the 4 solids ' of the last sentence have been restricted to cubes by the insertion of she fiyxcov eXxe dvvajuecuv, and we must understand ra oxegea as meaning 4 the solids above spoken of as oyxoi to the exclusion of the non-cube solids. The last sentence will then be true and all will be in order.1
1 The only evidence I can find for oyKos as the older term for tcvpos is in Simplicius, Phys. 1016, 23, commenting on Zeno’s paradox of the Stadium, where Zeno appears to have used oytcoi for the bodies which pass one another on the race-course (Ar., Phys. 239 b, 33). Simplicius records that Eudemus, in his account of Zeno’s argument, substituted Kvpoi for oy*ot. Eudemus may have understood oynot in Zeno as meaning ' cubes ' (the obviously appropriate figure). It may be added that some of the older terms in Greek mathematics have biological associations : xpoux (skin) for surface, hvvayus (power) for square, avfr] (growth) for dimension, acD/xa (body) for solid. These terms were applied to numbers as well as to figures. They were taken from living things and fit in with the Pythagorean conception of the unit as the f seed (arripyLa) or eternal root (p/£a) from which ratios grow or increase (av^ovrax) reciprocally on either side ' (Iambi, in Nicom., p. 11 Pistelli). The unit contains potentially (Suvapci) all the forms of even and odd number, ' as being a sort of fountain (rrqyfj) or root (pitfl) of both kinds ' (ibid., p. 15). If the seed or root contains the latent power (Bvvafus) of growth, its first increase is the line ; its second, the second power of the square, a skin (surface) . The most natural term for the third increase would be oyKos, ‘ swelling ', ‘ bulk \ The square has the power of * swelling itself out * (oytcovodcu) into the cube — the first body reached in the above progressions. When geometry became distinct from arithmetic, a fresh series of terms was borrowed from the
50
THE WORLD'S BODY
Plato has not indicated what are the quantities between which his geometrical proportion holds.1 It cannot be connected with the construction of the four regular solids which are later assigned to the primary bodies ; the proportion does not fit any of the sets of numbers there involved. It may be conjectured that the quan- tities in question are the total volumes of the four primary bodies. Empedocles had made his four elements equal in amount ; 2 but since his time it had been realised that the world was much larger than had been supposed.3 Since the heavenly bodies are composed mostly of fire, it is natural to suppose that the total volume of fire is much greater than that of earth. The largest number would then represent the volume of fire, the smallest that of earth. Plato would not imagine that anyone could know what the actual quan- tities were. He is only convinced that they must be linked in some definite proportion, evincing a rational design. This he asserts against the old Ionian belief in an indefinite quantity of matter, and the Atomists’ belief in an infinite plurality of atoms. If body were thus indefinite and unlimited, there would be nothing to hold the world together ; and in fact the Ionians and the Atomists had believed that their successive or coexistent worlds did fall to pieces and relapse into disorder. Plato's main point is emphasised in the concluding sentence : the world’s body, consisting of neither
shapes of diagrams and of models in three dimensions : imncbov plane figure) for surface ; rcrpaycuvov (four-cornered figure) for square ; 5tac rraois, Statmj/xa (extension, interval) for dimension ; crrepeov (solid figure) for body ; and perhaps we may add KvfSo s (die) for cube (< oyicos ) . Theon (p. 159) gives, as sixth in his list of 11 tetractyes, * the tetractys of things that are born and grow (tojv (f>vop,4vci)v ) : the seed is analogous to the unit or point, growth in length to the number 2 or the line, growth in breadth to the number 3 or the surface ; growth in thickness to the number 4 or solid ’.
1 Theon (pp. 155 ff.), following Pythagorean sources, enumerates n tetractyes. (There should be only 10, the perfect number ; Theon interpolates Plato’s complex series composed of the two progressions 1, 2, 4, 8 and 1, 3, 9, 27, used for the harmony of the world-soul, 35B). The third is (1) point, (2) line, (3) surface, (4) solid. The fourth is ‘ the tetractys of the simple bodies : (1) fire, (2) air, (3) water, (4) earth \ ‘ For such is the nature of the elements
in respect of the fineness or coarseness of their parts ( Kara X tirropiepciav Kal naxvp.€p€iav) , so that fire is to air as 1 to 2 ’, and so on. But Plato gives no ground for this interpretation, which ignores the fact that 1, 2, 3, 4 is not a geometrical progression.
a Hirzel, Themis 309, observes : Gleichheit der elementaren Massen ahnte schon das alteste Denken in der Welt’, and compares Hesiod, Theog. 126, Taca . . . iycivaro tcrov eairrfj Ovpavov and Soph., El. 87, yrjs laop.oip* aijp. I owe this reference to Mr. J. S. Morrison.
8 Anaxagoras supposed the Sun to be about the size of the Peloponnese, but Archytas estimated the distance of the Sun from the Earth as nine times the distance of the Moon. Epinomis 983A says that the Sun is larger than the Earth, and all the heavenly bodies are of stupendous size.
51
THE WORLD’S BODY 32c-33b
less nor more than four primary bodies, whose quantities are limited and linked in the most perfect proportion, is in unity and concord with itself and hence will not suffer dissolution from any internal disharmony of its parts. The bond is simply geometrical proportion. It is not a question of mechanical forces holding the world together. These belong to the second part of the dialogue and will be explained in due course at 58A.
32C-33B. The world's body contains the whole of all the four primary bodies
The next paragraph explicitly rejects the old Ionian conception of an indefinite circumambient mass of body, surrounding the cosmos and providing a reservoir of materials from which a series of successive worlds could be formed ; and also the Atomists' conception of an unlimited quantity of matter scattered throughout an infinite void. In this respect the body of the world is once more all-inclusive, like its model. It must be (1) a whole and complete, consisting of parts each of which is whole and complete ; (2) single or unique (not one of many coexistent worlds) ; (3) ever- lasting (not destroyed and superseded by another world), which it could hardly be, if it were exposed to assaults from outside.
32c. Now the frame of the world took up the whole of each of these four ; he who put it together made it consist of all the fire and water and air and earth, leaving no part or power of any one of them outside. This was his intent :
D. first, that it might be in the fullest measure a living being 33. whole and complete, of complete parts ; next, that it might be single, nothing being left over, out of which such another might come into being ; and moreover that it might be free from age and sickness. For he perceived that, if a body be composite, when hot things and cold and all things that have strong powers beset that body and attack it from without, they bring it to untimely dissolution and cause it to waste away by bringing upon it sickness and age. For this reason and so considering, he fashioned it as a single whole con-
B. sisting of all these wholes, complete and free from age and sickness.
We are here given one of the reasons why the Demiurge thought it better that the visible world should resemble its model in respect of uniqueness (31B).1 * * The primary bodies are described as 4 hot
1 Pr. i, 55 84 : * The proportion does away with internal lack of symmetry,
the uniqueness with external violence.'
52
THE WORLD’S BODY
and cold things and whatever has strong powers ‘ Powers * (dvvdfjieiQ) means the qualities or properties of bodies considered as having the ' power to act and be acted upon ’ (dvvajbug rov noielv xai 7tao%£iv). Hotness is the property of fire that is manifest when fire makes something else hot or causes in sentient beings a sensation of heat. Coldness is the answering property of the thing which suffers the affection. The ‘ powers ’ of the primary bodies are these qualitative properties, as distinct from the quantitative element of form, the regular geometrical shapes later imposed upon these qualities by the Demiurge (53B). Outside the cosmos, fire and the rest, if they could exist at all, could only exist as unformed ' powers as in the chaos described at 52D. They would then act upon the contents of the formed world and impair its health and stability.
The argument is Eleatic, or at least reminiscent of Melissus’ proof (frag. 7) that the unchangeable Being cannot suffer pain : ' for if it did, it could not be completely real, since nothing that suffers pain could be for ever or have the same power as the healthy. Nor could it be alike, if it suffered pain ; since it would suffer pain when something was taken from it or added to it, and then it would no longer be alike.’ Proclus (ii, 63) compares the description of the enfeeblement and wasting away of mortal living creatures when the particles of the body, instead of assimilating food from without, are broken down under its too powerful action (81c, d). Plato may also have in view the belief ascribed to Democritus that some of the innumerable worlds of his system are growing, others reaching their prime, others again in decay, and even that they destroy one another by collision.1 Plato’s world is saved from such calamities by its uniqueness. Aristotle appears to have repeated Plato’s argument in his dialogue On Philosophy : 2 The cosmos must be ungenerated and indestructible, since the causes of destruction must be some power (<5 vva/ug) either external or contained within it. There is nothing outside, since the cosmos contains everything. It is one, because if anything were left over, another like it might come into being ; whole, because all being is used up in forming it ; free from age and sickness, because bodies subject to sickness and age are upset by the strong assaults from outside of heat and cold and the other opposites, but no such power (dvva/ug) is left outside the world. Nor can anything inside it cause its dissolution, since then the part would be stronger than the whole.
1 Hippol. Ref. 1, 13 (Vors. A 40). Cf. Bailey, Greek Atomists , p. 146.
2 Frag. 19 (Ps.-Philo, de aetern. mundi ). Cf. Occelus Lucanus i.
53
THE WORLD’S BODY
33b — 34a
33B-34A. It is a sphere , without organs or limbs , rotating on its axis
In the second part of the dialogue we shall be told how Necessity co-operates with Reason by the working of mechanical causes which keep the world’s body in spherical shape (58A). Here we are con- cerned only with the rational desire of the Demiurge to give it the most perfect of forms and motions. The sphere is the most uniform of all solid figures, and the only one which, by rotating on its axis, can move within its own limits without change of place. This axial rotation symbolises the movement of Reason and is superior to all rectilinear motions.
33B. And for shape he gave it that which is fitting and akin to its nature. For the living creature that was to embrace all living creatures within itself, the fitting shape would be the figure that comprehends in itself all the figures there are ; accordingly, he turned its shape rounded and spherical, equidistant every way from centre to extremity — a figure the most perfect and uniform of all ; for he judged unifor- mity to be immeasurably better than its opposite.
Diels has quoted this description as the best commentary on Parmenides’ comparison of his One Being, ‘ complete on every side ’, to ‘ the mass of a well-rounded sphere, equally poised from the centre in every direction \1 Proclus (ii, 71) suggests two ex- planations of the statement that the sphere embraces all other figures. Geometers have demonstrated that the sphere has a greater volume than any solid figure with plane sides, having the same perimeter. Also, the sphere is the only figure in which every equilateral polygon can be inscribed ; so the reference might be to the five regular solids mentioned later where the primary bodies are constructed. It is curious that Euclid xi, def. 14, defines the sphere, not in the usual terms, here quoted by Plato, as having its extremity everywhere equidistant from the centre, but by the mode of generating it : 4 When, the diameter of a semicircle re-' maining fixed, the semicircle is carried round and restored again to the same position from which it began to be moved, the figure so comprehended is a sphere.’ As Heath 2 points out, the last propositions of Book xiii show why Euclid put the definition in this form : ‘ it is this particular view of a sphere which he uses to prove that the vertices of the regular solids which he wishes to “ comprehend ” in certain spheres do lie on the surfaces of those spheres
1 Parm., frag. 8, 42 (cited by Pr. ii, 69, on our passage).
* Euclid iii, 269.
0 r
54
THE WORLD’S BODY
33B. And all round on the outside he made it perfectly smooth, c. for several reasons. It had no need of eyes, for nothing visible was left outside ; nor of hearing, for there was nothing outside to be heard. There was no surrounding air to require breathing, nor yet was it in need of any organ by which to receive food into itself or to discharge it again wheti drained of its juices. For nothing went out or came into it from anywhere, since there was nothing : it was designed D. to feed itself on its own waste and to act and be acted upon entirely by itself and within itself ; because its framer thought that it would be better self-sufficient, rather than dependent upon anything else.
It had no need of hands to grasp with or to defend itself, nor yet of feet or anything that would serve to stand upon ; so he saw no need to attach to it these limbs to no purpose.
34. For he assigned to it the motion proper to its bodily form, namely that one of the seven which above all belongs to reason and intelligence ; accordingly, he caused it to turn about uniformly in the same place and within its own limits and made it revolve round and round ; he took from it all the other six motions and gave it no part in their wanderings. And since for this revolution it needed no feet, he made it without feet or legs.
Once more the argument is Eleatic, rather than Pythagorean. Xenophanes had declared that his limited and spherical world had no special organs of sense : * it sees, thinks, and hears as a whole ' (frag. 24). The statement may possibly be directed against a primitive doctrine which figures in some Orphic verses 1 frequently quoted by the Neoplatonists : Zeus is first and last, one royal body, containing fire water earth and air, night and day, Metis and Eros. The sky is his head, the stars his hair, the sun and moon his eyes, the air his intelligence (vovg), whereby he hears and marks all things ; no sound nor voice escapes his ears, and so on. The Pythagoreans certainly regarded the Heaven as a living creature which breathed the circumambient air. Xenophanes 2 again had denied this, like Plato here. Parmenides had said that the one Being was not bom and did not grow and Empedocles had echoed
1 Kern, Orpk. frag. 168. (Proclus ii, 82, quotes the fragment here, but as evidence that the living world has sensation.) Epiphanius (adv. haer. i, 7) attributes the doctrine to Pythagoras : ‘ he speaks of the god, i.e. the Heaven, as a body and of the sun and moon and the other stars as his eyes and so forth, as in a human being \
* D.L. ix, 19 (Vors. 11, Ar) ^ fiivroi ava7n>€iv.
55
4
THE WORLD’S BODY
33b-34a
him.1 All these statements must be taken as repudiating the primitive notion, traceable in the earliest Pythagorean cosmology, that the world starts from a seed and grows like a living thing by taking in, as nourishment, more and more of the body that environs it.2
A creature which requires no nourishment has no need t6 seek it by moving from place to place. So the sphere has no limbs, as Empedocles said : * No two branches (arms or wings ?) spring from his back, no feet, no swift-moving knees, no parts of generation ; but he was a Sphere every way equal to itself * {frag. 29). ‘ He
always remains in the same place, altogether unmoved, nor does it beseem him to go from place to place ’ (Xenophanes, 26). 3 There remains, as the only possible movement, the rotation proper to a sphere. That this is the only ' rational ’ movement is here stated without any explanation. The point is argued for the first time in the Laws (897D ff.), where the Athenian asks : Of what nature is the motion of reason ? He replies that rotation in one place is most akin to the revolution of reason : both motions are ' regular and uniform, in the same place, round the same things and in relation to the same things, according to one rule and system \4 Motion that has not these characteristics, but involves change of place without order, system, or rule, is akin to all unreason {avoia). So here the six rectilinear motions (up and down, forwards and backwards, to right and left) are associated with the irrational. They are ‘ Wanderings ’ in which the body of the universe, as a whole, has no share {ajihavec;), though its constituents, the primary bodies, will be found to possess them.
It is clearly meant that this rational movement of rotation is not confined to the fixed stars ; it is a motion of the whole universe carrying with it all its contents, as the Laws explicitly declares.5 Nothing has yet been said of the stars, the planets, and the Earth. We shall find that the planets are involved in this motion, though they have also independent motions of their own. The rotation
1 Parm. 8, 6, rlva yap yiwav Sidereal avrov [ 7rfj vodev av£rj0ev ; Emped. 17, 32, rovro h* €7rav£yo€t.e to nav rl kc koX n 60ev e\0ov ;
2 Cf. Aet. ii, 5, 1, * Aristotle : If the world is nourished, it will perish ; but in fact it needs no nourishment ; hence it is everlasting \
8 Parmenides also (frag. 8, 26-33) seems to connect the immovableness of his Being with its perfection and its ‘ having no needs ’ ( ovk emSeves), a divine characteristic (Xenophanes, Vors. 11, A 32, cmSelcrOai nrjbevds avrutv (twv 0ea>v) firjbeva. Xen. Mem. I, 6, 10 to firjSevds helaBai Belov etvcu. Eur. H.F . 1341. Cf. Ar. de caelo 1, 279 a, 34.)
4 Cf. below, 40 a.
5 897c, ‘ If we are to assert that the whole course and motion of the Heaven and of all that it contains are of like nature to the motion and revolution and reflections of reason . . .’
56
THE WORLD-SOUL
of the whole must also affect the Earth, a point that will come up again when we have to consider whether the Earth has any proper movement (p. 130). Here the rotation of the world with all its contents, from axis to circumference, symbolises that reason penetrates and governs the entire universe. On the other hand, the six irrational motions do occur in nature. Since all physical motions are ultimately caused by the self-moving soul, this passage supports the view that the World-Soul has an element of unreason and, like our own souls, is not perfectly controlled by the divine reason it contains. Plato will deny that the so-called * planets * really * wander ' from one course to another ; but the primary bodies have rectilinear motions which are constantly changing their direction. These will be associated with ‘ what happens of Neces- sity * and the ' wandering cause ' in the second part of the dialogue.
On the whole, this curiously archaic account of the world's body owes much more to the Eleatics and to Empedocles than to the early Pythagoreans. Where Xenophanes and Parmenides differed from the Pythagoreans Plato takes their side, except in Parmenides' denial of all motion. In particular, he rejects the primitive Pytha- gorean cosmogony, in which the living world expanded from a fiery seed by taking in the surrounding darkness, and, when formed, continued to breathe the vacant air from without. The sphere has always existed in its perfection and self-sufficiency, and outside it there is neither body nor void.1 It everlastingly fills the whole of space.
THE WORLD-SOUL
The next section, on the World-Soul, opens with a short summary enumerating the perfections which the world’s body owes to divine forethought, and adding that its circular motion, already mentioned, is due to its soul, extending from centre to circumference. The soul is coeval with the body ; both exist everlastingly. The com- position of the soul is next described : it consists of certain inter- mediate kinds of Existence, Sameness, and Difference. When these constituents have been compounded, the mixture is divided in the proportions of a musical harmonia. Out of the stuff so compounded and divided the Demiurge then constructs a system of circles, representing the principal motions of the stars and planets. The
1 Pr. repeatedly asserts that there is no void outside the cosmos for Plato any more than for Aristotle (ii, 73, 89, 91, etc.). In order to maintain his thesis, Tr. has to suppose that Plato is attributing to Timaeus a ‘ development within Pythagoreanism which repudiates prominent features of the original doctrine ' (p. 100).
57
34a-c
THE WORLD-SOUL
addition of these motions of soul to the bodily frame previously described starts the world upon its unceasing course of intelligent life. Finally, it is explained that, on the principle that like knows like, the composition of the World-Soul out of three elements, Existence, Sameness, and Difference, enables it both to know unchangeably real objects and to have true beliefs about changing things of the lower order of existence.
34A-B. Summary. Transition to the World-Soul
34A. All this, then, was the plan of the god who is for ever for the B. god who was sometime to be. According to this plan he made it smooth and uniform, everywhere equidistant from its centre, a body whole and complete, with complete bodies for its parts. And in the centre he set a soul and caused it to extend throughout the whole and further wrapped its body round with soul on the outside ; and so he established one world alone, round and revolving in a circle, solitary but able by reason of its excellence to bear itself company, needing no other acquaintance or friend but sufficient to itself. On all these accounts the world which he brought into being was a blessed god.
The statement (here and at 36E) that the soul is wrapped round the body of the world ‘ on the outside ' does not mean that the soul extends beyond the body, but only that it reaches the extreme circumference. Similarly, the yellow colour of an orange might be said to cover it all over on the outside. At Sophist 253D the specific Forms are 4 embraced on the outside ' (egcodev TceQcexojuhag) by the generic Form, but the genus does not extend farther than the species it contains. Aristotle again speaks of 4 the parts of animals on the outside ' (ra ££codev [xoQia r oov Cq>a>r, H.A. 494 a, 22), and Plotinus of ' the circumference on the outside ' of a circle (rj egatdev TteQipdQSLa, Enn. ii, 2, 1). There may, however, be a suggestion that the presence of a rational soul is most clearly revealed at the circumference, where the diurnal revolution of the whole world is visibly manifested by the stars, unmodified by other motions.1 This is the movement of the Same, which has the ‘ supremacy ' over all the interior motions, as Albinus observes in explaining this phrase.2
34 b-c. Soul is prior to body
34B. Now this soul, though it comes later in the account we are c. now attempting, was not made by the god younger than the body ; for when he joined them together, he would not have 1 Cf. Tr., p. 105. * Didasc ch. xiv. Cf. 36c.
58
COMPOSITION OF WORLD-SOUL
suffered the elder to be ruled by the younger. There is in us too much of the casual and random,1 which shows itself in our speech ; but the god made soul prior to body and more venerable in birth and excellence, to be the body's mistress and governor.
The words ‘ elder ' and ‘ prior ' here obviously do not mean that the world's soul existed before its body. Plato's point is made at length in Laws X, where it is argued that all motion must have its source in a self-moving thing, which is precisely the definition of soul (896A). Accordingly, the characteristic motions of soul — wish, reflection, forethought, etc. — must be the motions whose operation is primary (71 Qcorovgyol xivrjosu 897A) and which ‘ take over ' the secondary motions of bodies and control them. Soul itself may be associated with reason and guide all things aright, or with unreason. Plato is combating the atheistical view that the world order has arisen by chance and necessity from the blind working of lifeless powers in the bodily elements. That the world should have a body without a soul is as impossible as that it should have a soul without a body.
35A. Composition of the World-Soul
We now come to the composition and structure of the World-Soul. The next sentence states that it is compounded of three ingredients, which are described. The sentence (which, for convenience, I have divided into three numbered parts) is one of the most obscure in the whole dialogue, but not so obscure as it has been made by critics, who have altered the text and thereby dislocated the grammar and the sense. Proclus construed it in the only possible way, and his interpretation, once disengaged from the irrelevant intricacies of his own theology, is obviously correct.2
35 a. The things of which he composed soul and the manner of its composition were as follows : (1) Between the indivisible Existence that is ever in the same state and the divisible Existence that becomes in bodies, he compounded a third form of Existence composed of both. (2) Again, in the case of Sameness and in that of Difference, he also on the same
1 Because we are not wholly rational, but partly subject to those wandering causes which, 4 being devoid of intelligence, produce their effects casually and without order ’ (46E) .
2 This was pointed out by Professor G. M. A. Grube of Toronto in Class . Philol. xxvii (1932), p. 80. Other interpretations, ancient and modem, are reviewed by Tr. (pp. jio6 ff.) ; but he has (very excusably) overlooked the valuable part of Proclus’ discussion.
59
COMPOSITION OF WORLD-SOUL
35a
principle made a compound intermediate between that kind of them which is indivisible and the kind that is divisible in bodies. (3) Then, taking the three, he blended them all into a unity, forcing the nature of Difference, hard as it was to mingle, into union with Sameness, and mixing them together with Existence. 1
The sentence falls into three clauses : (1) The first describes the compounding, out of indivisible, unchanging Existence and the divisible Existence which becomes in the region of the bodily, of a third kind of Existence intermediate between them. This inter- mediate sort of Existence is one of the three ingredients in the final mixture of the last clause. (2) The second clause states that the Demiurge proceeded on the same principle (xara ravra) also in the case of Sameness and in that of Difference. As there were two kinds of Existence, the indivisible and the divisible, so Sameness and Difference have each two corresponding kinds, described as ‘ that kind of them which is indivisible, and the kind that is divisible in bodies ’ (to djuegeg avrc ov xal to xara ra acojuara fieqtarov ). Accordingly, as before, the Demiurge made a third intermediate kind of Sameness (and again of Difference), composed of the indi- visible and divisible kinds of Sameness (and of Difference). These intermediate kinds of Sameness and of Difference are the second and third ingredients in the final mixture.2 (3) Finally, taking the
1 The text is as follows : (1) rfjs dpeplarov Kal del Kara ravra exovarjs ovalas Kal rfjs av nepl ra owpuira yiyvopevys pepLarfjs rplrov e£ dp,<j>oiv ev peatp ovveKepaaaro ovalas etSos * (2) rfjs re ravrov <f>vae tvs av 7 rept. Kal rijs rov erepov Kal Kara ravra
awiarrjaev ev peatp rov re dpepovs avrcov Kal rov Kara ra atvpara pepiarov • (3) Kal
rpla Xafldjv a vra ovra ovveKepaaaro els plav 7 ravra ISeav, rrjv darepov <f>voiv Svapeucrov ovaav els ravrov awappdrrwv ftiq., petyvvs 8e pera rrjs ovalas . Against all the MSS., editors have omitted atf 7 rept after rrjs re ravrov (frvoecos- But cf. rrjs Si * EppoKparovs afi nepl <f>voea>s (20A 7) ; to 8* avnepl rfjs <j>povyoeu)s (24B, 7). At the end, Jackson saw that petyvvs 8e per a rrjs ovalas goes with the other present participle ovvappdrrcvv, not with the following aorist noirjaapevos , and punctu- ated as above.
* Commenting on clause (2) Proclus (ii, 155) says that among the kinds. Existence ranks first. Sameness second, Difference third. As the intermediate sort of Existence is subordinate to intelligible Existence but superior to divisible Existence in the corporeal, so the Sameness of the soul is inferior to indivisible Sameness, but has a superior unity to divisible Sameness ; and this is true also of its Difference. He recognises what (in the terms of his own theology) he calls the ' demiurgic genus * of Sameness (and of Difference) , as having three species — the indivisible, the divisible, and the intermediate. He assigns to soul the intermediate species of both Sameness and Difference, and says they are combined (in the final mixture) with the intermediate species of Existence. * For Plato says that, just as in the case of Existence, so in the case of Sameness and Difference the Demiurge compounded a third sort consisting of both, and “ on the same principle " (reading Kara ravra here
60
COMPOSITION OF WORLD-SOUL
three ingredients, the Demiurge mixes them all into a unity. We may set out the full scheme of the Soul's composition as follows :
First
Mixture
Indivisible Existence Divisible Existence Indivisible Sameness Divisible Sameness Indivisible Difference Divisible Difference
Fined
Mixture
Intermediate Existence
Intermediate Sameness
Intermediate Difference
>Soul
So much for the interpretation of the words ; it remains to consider what Plato’s symbolism means. This passage is one of many in which he is writing for readers already versed in his own later thought, without regard for the uninstructed, who would be left wholly in the dark. The terms Existence, Sameness, Difference, would be simply unintelligible to anyone who had not read and understood the Sophist.1 In that dialogue 2 these three ‘ kinds ’ or Forms are singled out for the purpose of showing how Forms in general can be connected in true affirmative statements and disjoined in true negative statements. It was necessary to point out that the words ‘ is ’ and * is not ’ are ambiguous : * is* can mean either * exists * or ‘ is the same as* ; * is not * can mean either ‘ does not exist * or ‘ is different from \ Non-existence has been ruled out of the discussion, because there are no true statements asserting that any Form does not exist. We are thus left with Existence, Sameness, Difference. It is carefully shown that these three Forms are wholly distinct. They are, indeed, ‘ all-pervading ’, in that every one of them ‘ combines ’ with every other and with every Form there is. You can say truly of any Form whatsoever (i) that it exists , (2) that it is the same as itself, and (3) that it is
and at 1551 and 15623 : so Tr.) : as in the former case the “ compound of both ” was a species of Existence, so in the case of these the intermediate is a species of Sameness or Difference.' This paraphrase clearly shows that he construed clause (2) in the only way consistent with the reading of the MSS. The confusions introduced by other commentators arise chiefly from omitting the words av iripi, and then imagining that tov re afiepovs avrcov k al rod Kara ra acofiara ficpioTov means the indivisible and divisible kinds (not ‘ of them ' (avr u>v), i.e. Sameness and Difference, but) of Existence. This reduces the Sfyr ^ase to a pointless repetition of the first, and leads to an identification ^leness and Difference with Indivisible and Divisible Existence, which -o flatly inconsistent with the Sophist.
1 Tr.’s exposition of our passage is complicated by his not allowing Timaeus to know the contents of the Sophist (p. 128), though he does not hesitate to translate Timaeus' doctrine into the terminology of Whitehead (p. 131).
8 For a fuller discussion see F. M. Comford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge (x935)> PP- 273 ff.
P.C.
6l
F
COMPOSITION OF WORLD-SOUL 35a
different from any other Form. But a main point of the argument is that no one of these three Forms can be identified with, or derived from, any other.1 In this part of the Sophist ‘ Existence ' (to dv) means, not ‘ that which exists \ but simply what is meant by the word * exists ' in such a statement as ' Motion exists (partakes of Existence) \ Since the Sophist (as the ancient critics saw) provides the sole clue to the sense of our passage, the word ovaia here must bear this meaning ; it should not be rendered by ‘ essence * or ‘ substance \ The upshot is that the soul has a sort of existence which is not simply identical with the real ‘ being ' of immutable and eternal things, nor yet with the ‘ becoming * of the things of sense, but has some of the characteristics of both these sorts of Existence.
In the Sophist only Forms are in question, and the sort of Exist- ence which Forms possess. This is evidently what Plato, in our passage, calls * indivisible and always unchanging Existence \ When we say that a Form exists, we mean that it has the eternal and immutable being assigned to the higher order of existents at the opening of Timaeus' discourse (28A). With this Plato contrasts here, as before, the ‘ divisible Existence which becomes in bodies ' or in the region of the bodily. This belongs to that lower order of existents which is ' always becoming, but never has real being ', in the realm of the perceptible. The Sophist (240B) recognises images (eidola) as a class of entities which have f some sort of existence ' (as dvr a noog), but not the real being of the real things (dvr cog dvr a) of which they are likenesses. These images of reality include all the contents of the visible world produced by the divine Demiurge, whose activity is compared in a later passage of the Sophist 2 to that of the human craftsman. They are those copies of the Forms which Timaeus (52 a) describes as like the Forms whose names they bear, sensible, generated, perpetually in motion, coming to be in a certain place and vanishing out of it, apprehended by belief involving perception. As likenesses (eixoveg) they are contrasted with real things (to dvr cog ov) and said to exist only as shifting appearances
1 As Plutarch observes : axnov nXaTOJvos eV ra> 2Jo<f>iarfj to ov /cat TO ravrov /cat
TO crepov , TTpOS 8& TOUTOt? 07 dO IV KCLl KlVTjOLV, CO? €KdOTOV €KdOTOV 8ld <f>4pOV Kdl 7T€VT€
ovra xojpls-dXXyXo>vTi0€fX€vov teal 8iopi£ovros, de anim.procr. 1013D. Soph. 254D ff. It should be noted that in the whole account of the composition of the World- Soul, nothing is said about Motion and Rest. These two Forms are illegiti- mately imported into the interpretation of our passage by Proclus and other ancient and modern commentators, misled by the baseless notion that Motion and Rest together with Existence, Sameness, Difference are the five Platonic ‘ categories \ For this misinterpretation of the Sophist, see F. M. Comford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge (1935), pp. 274 ff.
2 266a ff. See F. M. Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 328 note.
62
COMPOSITION OF WORLD-SOUL
in some medium (space), * clinging to existence somehow or other, on pain of being nothing at all 1 (52 c).
Between these two orders he now inserts a third form of Existence, compounded of both, which is proper to the soul. All this is correctly pointed out by Proclus. Throughout his commentary, he speaks of soul as an intermediate entity, composed of the inter- mediate kinds of Existence, Sameness, and Difference.1 He recognises three orders of Existence : ' intelligible and ungenerated things ; perceptible and generated things ; and intermediate things that are intelligible and generated. The first are altogether incom- posite and indivisible and hence ungenerated ; the second composite and divisible and hence generated ; the intermediate kind are intelligible and generated, being by nature both indivisible and divisible, both simple and composite, though in different ways \2 ' That by indivisible Existence Plato means the intelligible Existence which, in its entirety, partakes of eternity, and by divisible Existence in bodies the Existence which is inseparable from corporeal bulk and has its being in the whole of time, he himself makes plain by speaking of the former as “ unchanging ", of the latter as “ becom- ing ", in order to call the soul not only at once indivisible and divisible, but also “ intelligible " and " the first among things that become ".3 There is a difference between the everlastingness which is eternal and the everlastingness which is spread out along the infinity of time ; and there is yet another, composed of both, such as belongs to the soul. For in its being the soul is unchange- able and eternal, but in respect of its thoughts it is in change and in time/ 4
If this statement is substantially right, the World-Soul and all individual souls belong to both worlds and partake both of being and of becoming. As immortal and imperishable, the soul is ‘ most like the divine, immortal, intelligible, simple, and indis- soluble (because incomposite) ; whereas the body is most like the mortal, multiform, unintelligible, dissoluble (because composite) and perpetually changing * (Phaedo 78B). To that extent the soul is akin to the unchanging Forms in the eternal world. But the
1 e.g. ii, 137, cVcc ovv ^ tfjv^LKrj ovaia peerr] S^Sciktcu ran* ovtcov, 4k twv fidotjv
<oro)s earl ycvcov rod ovros, ovoias, ravrov, darepov ; iii, 254 s, ifjvyr} ionv ovaia
rijs ovtojs ovotjs ovoias xal ycveoecjs, ck tu)v jx4aojv ovyKpadelaa yevujv and in many other places.
2 Pr. ii, 11714.
* The reference is to 36E, 6, where soul is called ‘ invisible ’ and ' the best of generated things \ On that passage Pr. remarks that soul belongs at once to both classes — things that eternally are and things that become, being the lowest in rank of the former class, since time has its place in soul (ii, 293 18).
4 Pr. ii, 14728.
63
COMPOSITION OF WORLD-SOUL 35a
soul is unlike the Forms in that it is alive and intelligent, and life and intelligence cannot exist without change [Soph. 248E). All souls, therefore, must partake also of the lower order of existence in the realm of change and time.
The epithets ‘ indivisible ’ and * divisible ' call for some ex- planation.1 The being of a Form is indivisible. A Form may, indeed, be complex and hence definable ; but it is not ' composite ' (avvQerov), not ‘ put together * out of parts that can be actually separated or dissolved. Also every Form is unique ; it cannot be multiplied. It is not extended in space, and never leaves its own intelligible region to pass into the multitude of things that become in the world of change (52A-C). There is a sense in which every soul is unique and everlastingly preserves