CHAPTER XXXVIII.

TIMÆUS AND KRITIAS.

[Side-note: Persons and scheme of the Timæus and Kritias.]

Though the Republic of Plato appears as a substantive composition, not including in itself any promise of an intended sequel--yet the Timæus and Kritias are introduced by Plato as constituting a sequel to the Republic. Timæus the Pythagorean philosopher of Lokri, the Athenian Kritias, and Hermokrates, are now introduced, as having been the listeners while Sokrates was recounting his long conversation of ten Books, first with Thrasymachus, next with Glaukon and Adeimantus. The portion of that conversation, which described the theory of a model commonwealth, is recapitulated in its main characteristics: and Sokrates now claims from the two listeners some requital for the treat which he has afforded to them. He desires to see the citizens, whose training he has described at length, and whom he has brought up to the stage of mature capacity--exhibited by some one else as living, acting, and affording some brilliant evidence of courage and military discipline.[1] Kritias undertakes to satisfy his demand, by recounting a glorious achievement of the ancient citizens of Attica, who had once rescued Europe from an inroad of countless and almost irresistible invaders, pouring in from the vast island of Atlantis in the Western Ocean. This exploit is supposed to have been performed nearly 10,000 years before; and though lost out of the memory of the Athenians themselves, to have been commemorated and still preserved in the more ancient records of Sais in Egypt, and handed down through Solon by a family tradition to Kritias. But it is agreed between Kritias and Timæus,[2] that before the former enters upon his quasi-historical or mythical recital about the invasion from Atlantis, the latter shall deliver an expository discourse, upon a subject very different and of far greater magnitude. Unfortunately the narrative promised by Kritias stands before us only as a fragment. There is reason to believe that Plato never completed it.[3] But the discourse assigned to Timæus was finished, and still remains, as a valuable record of ancient philosophy.

[Footnote 1: Plato, Timæus, p. 20 B.]

[Footnote 2: Plato, Timæus, p. 27 A.]

[Footnote 3: Plutarch, Solon, c. 33.

Another discourse appears to have been contemplated by Plato, to be delivered by Hermokrates after Kritias had concluded (Plato, Timæus, p. 20 A; Kritias, p. 108). But nothing of this was probably ever composed.]

[Side-note: The Timæus is the earliest ancient physical theory, which we possess in the words of its author.]

For us, modern readers, the Timæus of Plato possesses a species of interest which it did not possess either for the contemporaries of its author, or for the ancient world generally. We read in it a system--at least the sketch of a system--of universal philosophy, the earliest that has come to us in the words of the author himself. Among the many other systems, anterior or simultaneous--those of Thales and the other Ionic philosophers, of Herakleitus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empedokles, Anaxagoras, Demokritus--not one remains to us as it was promulgated by its original author or supporters. We know all of them only in fragments and through the criticisms of others: fragments always scanty--criticisms generally dissentient, often harsh, sometimes unfair, introduced by the critic to illustrate opposing doctrines of his own. Here, however, the Platonic system is made known to us, not in this fragmentary and half-attested form, but in the full exposition which Plato himself deemed sufficient for it. This is a remarkable peculiarity.

[Side-note: Position** and character of the Pythagorean Timæus.]

Timæus is extolled by Sokrates as combining the character of a statesman with that of a philosopher: as being of distinguished wealth and family in his native city (the Epizephyrian Lokri), where he had exercised the leading political functions:--and as having attained besides, the highest excellence in science, astronomical as well as physical.[4] We know from other sources (though Plato omits to tell us so, according to his usual undefined manner of designating contemporaries) that he was of the Pythagorean school. Much of the exposition assigned to him is founded on Pythagorean principles, though blended by Plato with other doctrines, either his own or borrowed elsewhere. Timæus undertakes to requite Sokrates by giving a discourse respecting "The Nature of the Universe"; beginning at the genesis of the Kosmos, and ending with the constitution of man.[5] This is to serve as an historical or mythical introduction to the Platonic Republic recently described; wherein Sokrates had set forth the education and discipline proper for man when located as an inhabitant of the earth. Neither during the exposition of Timæus, nor after it, does Sokrates make any remark. But the commencement of the Kritias (which is evidently intended as a second part or continuation of the Timæus) contains, first, a prayer from Timæus that the Gods will pardon the defects of his preceding discourse and help him to amend them--next an emphatic commendation bestowed by Sokrates upon the discourse: thus supplying that recognition which is not found in the first part.[6]

[Footnote 4: Plato, Timæus, pp. 20 A, 27 A.]

[Footnote 5: Plato, Timæus, p. 27 A. [Greek: e)/doxe ga\r ê(mi=n Ti/maion me/n, a(/te a)stronomikô/taton ê(mô=n, kai\ _peri\ phu/seôs tou= panto\s_ ei)de/nai ma/lista e)/rgon pepoiême/non, prô=ton le/gein a)rcho/menon a)po\ tê=s tou= ko/smou gene/seôs, teleuta=|n de\ ei)s a)nthrô/pôn phu/sin.]]

[Footnote 6: Plato, Kritias, p. 108 B.]

[Side-note: Poetical imagination displayed by Plato. He pretends to nothing more than probability. Contrast with Sokrates, Isokrates, Xenophon.]

In this Hymn of the Universe (to use a phrase of the rhetor Menander[7] respecting the Platonic Timæus) the prose of Plato is quite as much the vehicle of poetical imagination as the hexameters of Hesiod, Empedokles, or Parmenides. The Gods and Goddesses, whom Timæus invokes at the commencement,[8] supply him with superhuman revelations, like the Muses to Hesiod, or the Goddess of Wisdom to Parmenides. Plato expressly recognises the multiplicity of different statements current, respecting the Gods and the generation of the Universe. He claims no superior credibility for his own. He professes to give us a new doctrine, not less probable than the numerous dissentient opinions already advanced by others, and more acceptable to his own mind. He bids us be content with such a measure of probability, because the limits of our human nature preclude any fuller approach to certainty.[9] It is important to note the modest pretensions here unreservedly announced by Plato as to the conviction and assent of hearers:--so different from the confidence manifested in the Republic, where he hires a herald to proclaim his conclusion--and from the overbearing dogmatism which we read in his Treatise De Legibus, where he is providing a catechism for the schooling of citizens, rather than proofs to be sifted by opponents. He delivers, respecting matters which he admits to be unfathomable, the theory most in harmony with his own religious and poetical predispositions, which he declares to be as probable as any other yet proclaimed. The Xenophontic Sokrates, who disapproved all speculation respecting the origin and structure of the Kosmos, would probably have granted this equal probability, and equal absence of any satisfactory grounds of preferential belief--both to Plato on one side and to the opposing theorists on the other. And another intelligent contemporary, Isokrates, would probably have considered the Platonic Timæus as one among the same class of unprofitable extravagancies, to which he assigns the theories of Herakleitus, Empedokles, Alkmæon, Parmenides, and others.[10] Plato himself (in the Sophistês)[11] characterises the theories of these philosophers as fables recited to an audience of children, without any care to ensure a rational comprehension and assent. _They_ would probably have made the like criticism upon his Timæus. While he treats it as fable to apply to the Gods the human analogy of generation and parentage--they would have considered it only another variety of fable, to apply to them the equally human analogy of constructive fabrication or mixture of ingredients. The language of Xenophon shows that he agreed with his master Sokrates in considering such speculations as not merely unprofitable, but impious.[12] And if the mission from the Gods--constituting Sokrates Cross-Examiner General against the prevailing fancy of knowledge without the reality of knowledge--drove him to court perpetual controversy with the statesmen, poets, and Sophists of Athens; the same mission would have compelled him, on hearing the sweeping affirmations of Timæus, to apply the test of his Elenchus, and to appear in his well-known character of confessed[13] but inquisitive ignorance. The Platonic Timæus is positively anti-Sokratic. It places us at the opposite or dogmatic pole of Plato's character.[14]

[Footnote 7: Menander, De Encomiis, i. 5, p. 39. Compare Karsten, De Empedoclis Vitâ, p. 72; De Parmenidis Vitâ, p. 21.]

[Footnote 8: Plato, Timæus, p. 27 D; Hesiod, Theogon, 22-35-105.]

[Footnote 9: Plato, Timæus, pp. 29 D, 28 D, 59 C-D, 68 C, 72 D. [Greek: kat' e)mê\n do/xan--para\ tê=s e)mê=s psê/phou] (p. 52 D). In many parts of the dialogue he repeats that he is delivering his _own opinion_--that he is affirming what is probable. In the Phædon, however, we find that [Greek: ei)ko/tes lo/goi] are set aside as deceptive and dangerous, Phædon, p. 92 D. In the remarkable passage of the Timæus, p. 48 C-D, Plato intimates that he will not in the present discourse attempt to go to the bottom of the subject--[Greek: tê\n me\n peri\ a(pa/ntôn ei)/te a)rchê\n ei)/te a)rcha\s ei)/te o(/pê| dokei= tou/tôn pe/ri, to\ nu=n ou) r(ête/on]--but that he will confine himself to [Greek: ei)ko/tes lo/goi--to\ de\ kat' a)rcha\s r(êthe\n diaphula/ttôn, tê\n _tô=n ei)ko/tôn lo/gôn du/namin, peira/somai mêdeno\s ê(=tton ei)ko/ta_, ma=llon de\ kai\ e)/mprosthen a)p' a)rchê=s peri\ e(ka/stôn kai\ xumpa/ntôn le/gein.]

What these _principia_ are, which Plato here keeps in the background, I do not clearly understand. Susemihl (Entwickelung der Plat. Phil. ii. p. 405) and Martin (Études sur le Timée, ii. p. 173, note 56) have both given elucidations of this passage, but neither of them appear to me satisfactory. Simplikius says:--[Greek: O( Pla/tôn tê\n phusiologi/an ei)kotologi/an e)/legen ei)=nai, ô(=| kai\ A)ristote/lês summarturei=], Schol. Aristot. Phys. 325, a. 25 Brandis.]

[Footnote 10: Isokrates, De Permutatione, Or. xv. s. 287-288-304. [Greek: ê(gou=mai ga\r ta\s me\n toiau/tas _perittologi/as_ o(moi/as ei)=nai tai=s thaumatopoii/ais tai=s ou)de\n me\n ô)phelou/sais, u(po\ de\ tô=n a)noê/tôn perista/tois gignome/nais] (s. 288). . . .

[Greek: tou\s de\ tô=n me\n a)nagkai/ôn a)melou=ntas, ta\s de\ tô=n palaiô=n sophistô=n _teratologi/as_ a)gapô=ntas, philosophei=n phasi/n] (s. 304).

Compare another passage of Isokrates, the opening of Orat. x. Encomium Helenæ; in which latter passage he seems plainly to notice one of the main ethical doctrines advanced by Plato, though he does not mention Plato's name, nor indeed the name of any living person.]

[Footnote 11: Plato, Sophist. pp. 242-243. [Greek: Mu=tho/n tina e(/kastos phai/netai/ moi diêgei=sthai paisi\n ô(s ou)=sin ê(mi=n; o( me\n ô(s tri/a ta\ o)/nta, polemei= de\ a)llê/lois e)ni/ote au)tô=n a)/tta pê|, to/te de\ kai\ phi/la gigno/mena ga/mous te kai\ to/kous kai\ tropha\s tô=n e)kgo/nôn pare/chetai] (p. 242 C-D).]

[Footnote 12: Xenophon, Memorab. i. 1, 11-14. [Greek: Ou)dei\s de\ pô/pote Sôkra/tous ou)de\n a)sebe\s ou)de\ a)no/sion ou)/te pra/ttontos ei)=den ou)/te le/gontos ê)/kousen; _ou)de\ ga\r_ peri\ tê=s tô=n pa/ntôn phu/seôs ê(=per tô=n a)/llôn oi(/ plei=stoi, diele/geto, skopô=n _o(/pôs o( kalou/menos u(po\ tô=n sophistô=n ko/smos_ e)/chei, kai\ ti/sin a)na/gkais e(/kasta gi/gnetai tô=n ou)rani/ôn; a)lla\ kai\ tou\s phronti/zontas ta\ toiau=ta môrai/nontas a)pedei/knue.]

Lucretius, i. 80:--

Illud in his rebus vereor, ne forté rearis Impia te rationis inire elementa, viamque Indugredi sceleris, &c.

The above cited passage of Xenophon shows that the term [Greek: Ko/smos] was in his time a technical word among philosophers, not yet accepted in that meaning by the general public. The aversion to investigation of the Kosmos, on the ground of impiety, entertained by Sokrates and Xenophon, is expressed by Plato in the Leges (vii. 821 A) in the following words of the principal speaker,--[Greek: To\n me/giston theo\n kai\ o(/lon to\n ko/smon phame\n ou)/te zêtei=n dei=n ou)/te polupragmonei=n ta\s ai)ti/as e)reunô=ntas; ou) ga\r ou)d' o(/sion ei)=nai; to\ de\ e)/oike pa=n tou/tou tou)nanti/on gigno/menon o)rthô=s a)\n gi/gnesthai.] This last passage is sometimes cited as if the word [Greek: phame\n] expressed the opinion of the principal speaker, or of Plato himself--which is a mistake: [Greek: phame\n] here expresses the opinion which the principal speaker is about to controvert.]

[Footnote 13: See above, vol. i. ch. ix. of the present work, where the Platonic Apology is reviewed.]

[Footnote 14: "Quocirca Timæus non dialecticé disserens inducitur, sed loquitur ut hierophanta, qui mundi arcana aliunde accepta grandi ac magnificâ oratione pronunciat; quin etiam quæ experientiæ suspicionem superant, mythorum ac symbolorum involucris obtegit, eoque modo quam ea certa sint, legentibus non obscuré significat."--Stallbaum, Prolegg. ad Platon. Timæum, c. iv. p. 37.]

[Side-note: Fundamental distinction between Ens and Fientia.]

Timæus begins by laying down the capital distinction between--1. Ens or the Existent, the eternal and unchangeable, the world of Ideas or Forms, apprehended only by mental conception or Reason, but the object of infallible cognition. 2. The Generated and Perishable--the sensible, phenomenal, material world--which never really exists, but is always appearing and disappearing; apprehended by sense, yet not capable of becoming the object of cognition, nor of anything better than opinion or conjecture. The Kosmos, being a visible and tangible body, belongs to this last category. Accordingly, it can never be really known: no true or incontestable propositions can be affirmed respecting it: you can arrive at nothing higher than opinion and probability.

Plato seems to have had this conviction, respecting the uncertainty of all affirmations about the sensible world or any portions of it, forcibly present to his mind.

[Side-note: Postulates of Plato. The Demiurgus--The Eternal Ideas--Chaotic Materia or Fundamentum. The Kosmos is a living being and a God.]

He next proceeds to assume or imply, as postulates, his eternal Ideas or Forms--a coeternal chaotic matter or indeterminate Something--and a Demiurgus or Architect to construct, out of this chaos, after contemplation of the Forms, copies of them as good as were practicable in the world of sense. The exposition begins with these postulates. The Demiurgus found all visible matter, not in a state of rest, but in discordant and irregular motion. He brought it out of disorder into order. Being himself good (says Plato), and desiring to make everything else as good as possible, he transformed this chaos into an orderly Kosmos.[15] He planted in its centre a soul spreading round, so as to pervade all its body--and reason in the soul: so that the Kosmos became animated, rational--a God.

[Footnote 15: Plato, Timæus, pp. 29-30.]

[Side-note: The Demiurgus not a Creator--The Kosmos arises from his operating upon the random movements of Necessity. He cannot controul necessity--he only persuades.]

The Demiurgus of Plato is not conceived as a Creator,[16] but as a Constructor or Artist. He is the God Promêtheus, conceived as pre-kosmical, and elevated to the primacy of the Gods: instead of being subordinate to Zeus, as depicted by Æschylus and others. He represents provident intelligence or art, and beneficent purpose, contending with a force superior and irresistible, so as to improve it as far as it will allow itself to be improved.[17] This pre-existing superior force Plato denominates Necessity--"the erratic, irregular, random causality," subsisting prior to the intervention of the Demiurgus; who can only work upon it by persuasion, but cannot coerce or subdue it.[18] The genesis of the Kosmos thus results from a combination of intelligent force with the original, primordial Necessity; which was persuaded, and consented, to have its irregular agency regularised up to a certain point, but no farther. Beyond this limit the systematising arrangements of the Demiurgus could not be carried; but all that is good or beautiful in the Kosmos was owing to them.[19]

[Footnote 16: "The notion of absolute Creation is unknown to Plato, as it is to all Grecian and Roman antiquity" (Brandis, Gesch. der Griech. Röm. Philos. vol. ii. part 2, p. 306).]

[Footnote 17: The verbs used by Plato to describe the proceedings of the Demiurgus are [Greek: xunetektai/neto, xune/stêse, xunekera/sato, e)mêchanê/sato], and such like.]

[Footnote 18: Plato, Timæus, pp. 47 E-48 A. [Greek: e)pide/deiktai ta\ dia\ nou= dedêmiourgême/na; dei= de\ kai\ ta\ di' a)na/gkês gigno/mena tô=| lo/gô| parathe/sthai. Memigme/nê ga\r ou)=n ê( tou=de tou= ko/smou ge/nesis e)x a)na/gkês te kai\ nou= xusta/seôs e)gennê/thê; nou= de\ a)na/gkês a)/rchontos _tô=| pei/thein au)tê\n_ tô=n gignome/nôn ta\ plei=sta e)pi\ to\ be/ltiston a)/gein, tau/tê| kata\ tau=ta/ te di' a)na/gkês ê(ttôme/nês u(po\ _pei/thous_ e)/mphronos, ou(/tô kat' a)rcha\s xuni/stato to/de to\ pa=n. Ei)/ tis ou)=n ê(= ge/gone, kata\ tau=ta o)/ntôs e)rei=, mikte/on kai\ _to\ tê=s planôme/nês ei)=dos ai)ti/as_, ê(= phe/rein pe/phuken.] Compare p. 56 C: [Greek: o(/pê|per ê( tê=s a)na/gkês _e(kou=sa peisthei=sa/_ te phu/sis u(pei=ke.] Also pp. 68 E, 75 B, 30 A.

[Greek: Te/chnê d' a)na/gkês a)stheneste/ra makrô=|] says Prometheus in Æschylus (P. V. 514). He identifies [Greek: A)na/gkê] with the [Greek: Moi=rai]: and we read in Herodotus (i. 91) of Apollo as trying to persuade the Fates to spare Kroesus, but obtaining for him only a respite of three years--[Greek: ou)k oi(=o/n te e)ge/neto paragagei=n moi/ras, _o(/son de\ e)ne/dôkan au(=tai_, ê)nu/sato kai\ e)chari/sato/ oi(.] This is the language used by Plato about [Greek: A)na/gkê] and the Demiurgus. A valuable exposition of the relations believed to subsist between the Gods and [Greek: Moi=ra] is to be found in Naegelsbach, Homerische Theologie (chap. iii. pp. 113-131).]

[Footnote 19: Plutarch reproduces this theory (Phokion, c. 2, ad fin.) of God governing the Kosmos, not by superior force, but by reason and persuasion--[Greek: ê(=| kai\ to\n ko/smon o( theo\s le/getai dioikei=n, ou) biazo/menos, a)lla\ peithoi= kai\ lo/gô| para/gôn tê\n a)na/gkên.]]

[Side-note: Meaning of Necessity in Plato.]

We ought here to note the sense in which Plato uses the word Necessity. This word is now usually understood as denoting what is fixed, permanent, unalterable, knowable beforehand. In the Platonic Timæus it means the very reverse:--the indeterminate, the inconstant, the anomalous, that which can neither be understood nor predicted. It is Force, Movement, or Change, with the negative attribute of not being regular, or intelligible, or determined by any knowable antecedent or condition--_Vis consili expers_. It coincides, in fact, with that which is meant by _Freewill_, in the modern metaphysical argument between Freewill and Necessity: it is the undetermined or self-determining, as contrasted with that which depends upon some given determining conditions, known or knowable. The Platonic Necessity[20] is identical with the primeval Chaos, recognised in the Theogony or Kosmogony of Hesiod. That poet tells us that Chaos was the primordial Something: and that afterwards came Gæa, Eros, Uranus, Nyx, Erebus, &c., who intermarried, males with females, and thus gave birth to numerous divine persons or kosmical agents--each with more or less of definite character and attributes. By these supervening agencies, the primeval Chaos was modified and regulated, to a greater or less extent. The Platonic Timæus starts in the same manner as Hesiod, from an original Chaos. But then he assumes also, as coæval with it, but apart from it, his eternal Forms or Ideas: while, in order to obtain his kosmical agents, he does not have recourse, like Hesiod, to the analogy of intermarriages and births, but employs another analogy equally human and equally borrowed from experience--that of a Demiurgus or constructive professional artist, architect, or carpenter; who works upon the model of these Forms, and introduces regular constructions into the Chaos. The antithesis present to the mind of Plato is that between disorder or absence of order, announced as Necessity,--and order or regularity, represented by the Ideas.[21] As the mediator between these two primeval opposites, Plato assumes Nous, or Reason, or artistic skill personified in his Demiurgus: whom he calls essentially good--meaning thereby that he is the regularising agent by whom order, method, and symmetry, are copied from the Ideas and partially realised among the intractable data of Necessity. Good is something which Plato in other works often talks about, but never determines: his language implies sometimes that he knows what it is, sometimes that he does not know. But so far as we can understand him, it means order, regularity, symmetry, proportion--by consequence, what is ascertainable and predictable.[22] I will not say that Plato means this always and exclusively, by Good: but he seems to mean so in the Timæus. Evil is the reverse. Good or regularity is associated in his mind exclusively with rational agency. It can be produced, he assumes, only by a reason, or by some personal agent analogous to a reasonable and intelligent man. Whatever is not so produced, must be irregular or bad.

[Footnote 20: In the Symposion (pp. 195 D, 197 B) we find Eros panegyrised as having amended and mollified the primeval empire of [Greek: A)na/gkê].

The Scholiast on Hesiod, Theogon. 119, gives a curious metaphysical explanation of [Greek: E)/ros], mentioned in the Hesiodic text--[Greek: tê\n e)gkatesparme/nên phusikô=s kinêtikê\n ai)ti/an e(ka/stô| tô=n o)ntôn, kath' ê(\n e)phi/etai e(/kastos tou= ei)=nai.]]

[Footnote 21: In the Philêbus, p. 23 C-D, these three are recognised under the terms:--1. [Greek: Pe/ras]. 2. [Greek: A)/peiron]. 3. [Greek: Ai)ti/a--tê=s xummi/xeôs tou/tôn pro\s a)/llêla tê\n ai)ti/an].

Compare a curious passage of Plutarch, Symposiacon, viii. 2, p. 719 E, illustrating the Platonic phrase--[Greek: to\n theo\n a)ei\ geômetrei=n].]

[Footnote 22: Plato, Timæus, p. 30 A. Compare the Republic, vi. p. 506, Philêbus, pp. 65-66, and the investigation in the Euthydêmus, pp. 279-293, which ends in no result.]

[Side-note: Process of demiurgic construction--The total Kosmos comes logically first, constructed on the model of the [Greek: Au)tozô=on].]

These are the fundamental ideas which Plato expands into a detailed Kosmology. The first application which he makes of them is, to construct the total Kosmos. The total is here the logical Prius, or anterior to the parts in his order of conception. The Kosmos is one vast and comprehensive animal: just as in physiological description, the leading or central idea is, that of the animal organism as a whole, to which each and all the parts are referred. The Kosmos is constructed by the Demiurgus according to the model of the [Greek: Au)tozô=on],[23]--(the Form or Idea of Animal--the eternal Generic or Self-Animal,)--which comprehends in itself the subordinate specific Ideas of different sorts of animals. This Generic Idea of Animal comprehended four of such specific Ideas: 1. The celestial race of animals, or Gods, who occupied the heavens. 2. Men. 3. Animals living in air--Birds. 4. Animals living on land or in water.[24] In order that the Kosmos might approach near to its model the Self-animal, it was required to contain all these four species. As there was but one Self-Animal, so there could only be one Kosmos.

[Footnote 23: Plato, Timæus, p. 30 D.]

[Footnote 24: Plat. Timæus, pp. 39 E-40 A. [Greek: ê(=per ou)=n nou=s e)nou/sas i)de/as tô=| o(\ e)/sti zô=on, oi(=ai/ te e)/neisi kai\ o(/sai, kathora=|, toiau/tas kai\ tosau/tas dienoê/thê dei=n kai\ to/de schei=n. Ei)si\ de\ te/ttares, mi/a me\n ou)ra/nion theô=n ge/nos, a)/llê de\ ptêno\n kai\ a)eropo/ron, tri/tê de\ e)/nudron ei)=dos, pezo\n de\ kai\ chersai=on te/tarton.]]

We see thus, that the primary and dominant idea, in Plato's mind, is, not that of inorganic matter, but that of organised and animated matter--life or soul embodied. With him, biology comes before physics.

The body of the Kosmos was required to be both visible and tangible: it could not be visible without fire: it could not be tangible without something solid, nor solid without earth. But two things cannot be well put together by themselves, without a third to serve as a bond of connection: and that is the best bond which makes them One as much as possible. Geometrical proportion best accomplishes this object. But as both Fire and Earth were solids and not planes, no one mean proportional could be found between them. Two mean proportionals were necessary. Hence the Demiurgus interposed air and water, in such manner, that as fire is to air, so is air to water: and as air is to water, so is water to earth.[25] Thus the four elements, composing the body of the Kosmos, were bound together in unity and friendship. Of each of the four, the entire total was used up in the construction: so that there remained nothing of them apart, to hurt the Kosmos from without, nor anything as raw material for a second Kosmos.[26]

[Footnote 25: Plato, Tim. pp. 31-32. The comment of Macrobius on this passage (Somn. Scip. i. 6, p. 30) is interesting, if not conclusive. But the language in which Plato lays down this doctrine about mean proportionals is not precise, and has occasioned much difference of opinion among commentators. Between two solids (he says), that is, solid numbers, or numbers generated out of the product of three factors, no one mean proportional can be found. This is not universally true. The different suggestions of critics to clear up this difficulty will be found set forth in the elaborate note of M. Martin (Études sur le Timée, vol. 1, note xx. pp. 337-345), who has given what seems a probable explanation. Plato (he supposes) is speaking only of prime numbers and their products. In the language of ancient arithmeticians _linear numbers_, _par excellence_ or properly so-called, were the prime numbers, measurable by unity only; _plane numbers_ were the products of two such linear numbers or prime numbers; _solid numbers_ were the products of three such. Understanding solid numbers in this restricted sense, it will be perfectly true that between any two of them you can never find _any one_ solid number or any whole number which shall be a mean proportional, but you can always find _two_ solid numbers which shall be mean proportionals. One mean proportional will never be sufficient. On the contrary, one mean proportional will be sufficient between two plane numbers (in the restricted sense) when these numbers are squares, though not if they are not squares. It is therefore true, that in the case of two _solid_ numbers** (so understood) one such mean proportional will never be sufficient, while two can always be found; and that between two _plane_ numbers** (so understood) one such mean proportional will in certain cases be sufficient and may be found. This is what is present to Plato's mind, though in enunciating it he does not declare the restriction under which alone it is true. M. Boeckh (Untersuchungen über das Kosmische System des Platon, p. 17) approves of Martin's explanation. At the same time M. Martin has given no proof that Plato had in his mind the distinction between prime numbers and other numbers, for his references in p. 338 do not prove this point; moreover, the explanation assumes such very loose expression, that the phrase of M. Cousin in his note (p. 334) is, after all, perfectly just: "Platon n'a pas songé à donner à sa phrase une rigueur mathématique": and the more simple explanation of M. Cousin (though Martin rejects it as unworthy) may perhaps include all that is really intended. "Si deux surfaces peuvent être unies par un seul terme intermédiaire, il faudra deux termes intermédiaires pour unir deux solides: et l'union sera encore plus parfaite si la raison des deux proportions est la même."]

[Footnote 26: Plat. Timæus, p. 32 E.]

[Side-note: Body of the Kosmos, perfectly spherical--its rotations.]

The Kosmos was constructed as a perfect sphere, rounded, because that figure both comprehends all other figures, and is, at the same time, the most perfect, and most like to itself.[27] The Demiurgus made it perfectly smooth on the outside, for various reasons.[28] First, it stood in no need of either eyes or ears, because there was nothing outside to be seen or heard. Next, it did not want organs of respiration, inasmuch as there was no outside air to be breathed:--nor nutritive and excrementary organs, because its own decay supplied it with nourishment, so that it was self-sufficing, being constructed as its own agent and its own patient.[29] Moreover the Demiurgus did not furnish it with hands, because there was nothing for it either to grasp or repel--nor with legs, feet, or means of standing, because he assigned to it only one of the seven possible varieties of movement.[30] He gave to it no other movement except that of rotation in a circle, in one and the same place: which is the sort of movement that belongs most to reason and intelligence, while it is impracticable to all other figures except the spherical.[31]

[Footnote 27: Plato, Timæus, p. 33 B. [Greek: kuklotere\s au)to\ e)torneu/sato], &c.]

[Footnote 28: Plato, Timæus, p. 33 C. [Greek: lei=on de\ dê\ ku/klô| pa=n e)/xôthen au)to\ a)pêkribou=to, pollô=n cha/rin], &c.

Aristotle also maintains that the sphericity of the Kosmos is so exact that no piece of workmanship can make approach to it. (De Coelo, ii. p. 287, b. 15.)]

[Footnote 29: Plato, Timæus, p. 33 E. On this point the Platonic Timæus is not Pythagorean, but the reverse. The Pythagoreans recognised extraneous to the Kosmos, [Greek: to\ a)/peiron pneu=ma] or [Greek: to\ keno/n]. The Kosmos was supposed to inhale this vacuum, which penetrating into the interior, formed the separating interstices between its constituent parts (Aristot. Physic. iv. p. 213, b. 22).]

[Footnote 30: Plato, Timæus, p. 34 A. [Greek: e)pi\ de\ tê\n peri/odon tau/tên, a(/t' ou)de\n podô=n de/on, a)skele\s kai\ a)/poun au)to\ e)ge/nnêsen.]

Plato reckons six varieties of rectilinear motion, neither of which was assigned to the Kosmos--forward, backward, upward, downward, to the right, to the left.]

[Footnote 31: Plat. Tim. p. 34 A. [Greek: ki/nêsin ga\r a)pe/neimen au)tô=| tê\n tou= sô/matos oi)kei/an, tô=n e(/pta tê\n peri\ nou=n kai\ phro/nêsin ma/lista ou)/san.] This predicate respecting circular motion belongs to Plato and not to Aristotle; but Aristotle makes out, in his own way, a strong case to show that circular motion _must belong_ to the [Greek: Prô=ton sô=ma], as being the first among all varieties of motion, the most dignified and privileged, the only one which can be for ever uniform and continuous. Aristot. Physic. ix. p. 265, a. 15; De Coelo, i. pp. 269-270, ii. p. 284, a. 10.]

[Side-note: Soul of the Kosmos--its component ingredients--stretched from centre to circumference.]

The Kosmos, one and only-begotten, was thus perfect as to its body, including all existent bodily material,--smooth, even, round, and equidistant from its centre to all points of the circumference.[32] The Demiurgus put together at the same time its soul or mind; which he planted in the centre and stretched throughout its body in every direction,--so as not only to reach the circumference, but also to enclose and wrap it round externally. The soul, being intended to guide and govern the body, was formed of appropriate ingredients, three distinct ingredients mixed together: 1. The Same--The Identical--The indivisible, and unchangeable essence of Ideas. 2. The Different--The Plural--The divisible essence of bodies or of the elements. 3. A third compound, formed of both these ingredients melted into one.--These three ingredients--Same, Different, Same and Different in one,--were blended together in one compound, to form the soul of the Kosmos: though the Different was found intractable and hard to conciliate.[33] The mixture was divided, and the portions blended together, according to a scale of harmonic numerical proportion complicated and difficult to follow.[34] The soul of the Kosmos was thus harmonically constituted. Among its constituent elements, the Same, or Identity, is placed in an even and undivided rotation of the outer or sidereal sphere of the Kosmos,--while the Different, or Diversity, is distributed among the rotations, all oblique, of the seven interior or planetary spheres--that is, the five planets, Sun, and Moon. The outer sphere revolved towards the right: the interior spheres in an opposite direction towards the left. The rotatory force of the Same (of the outer Sphere) being not only one and undivided, but connected with and dependent upon the solid revolving axis which traverses the diameter of the Kosmos--is far greater than that of the divided spheres of the Different; which, while striving to revolve in an opposite direction, each by a movement of its own--are overpowered and carried along with the outer sphere, though the time of revolution, in the case of each, is more or less modified by its own inherent counter-moving force.[35]

[Footnote 32: Plat. Tim. p. 31 B. [Greek: ei(=s o(/de monogenê\s ou)rano/s], &c.]

[Footnote 33: Plat. Tim. p. 35 A. [Greek: Tau)to\n--to\ a)me/riston--tha/teron--to\ meristo\n--tri/ton e)x a)mphoi=n ou)si/as ei)=dos.]]

[Footnote 34: Plato, Timæus, pp. 35-36. The pains which were taken by commentators in antiquity to expound and interpret this numerical scale may be seen especially illustrated in Plutarch's Treatise, De Animæ Procreatione in Timæo, pp. 1012-1030, and the Epitome which follows it. There were two fundamental [Greek: tetraktu/es] or quaternions, one on a binary, the other on a ternary scale of progression, which were arranged by Krantor (Plutarch, p. 1027 E) in the form of the letter [Greek: L], as given in Macrobius (Somn. Scip. i. 6, p. 35). The intervals between these figures, are described by Plato as filled up by intervening harmonic fractions, so as to constitute an harmonic or musical diagram or scale of four octaves and a major sixth. (Boeckh's Untersuch. p. 19.) M. Boeckh has expounded this at length in his Dissertation, Ueber die Bildung der Welt-Seele im Timäos. Other expositors after him.

1 /\ / \ 2_/_ _\_3 / \ 4 _/_ _\_9 / \ ------ ------ 8 27 ]

[Footnote 35: Plato, Timæus, p. 36 C. [Greek: tê\n me\n ou)=n e)/xô phora\n e)pephê/misen ei)=nai tê=s tau)tou= phu/seôs, tê\n d' e)nto/s, tê=s tha)te/rou. tê\n me\n dê\ tau)tou= kata\ pleura\n e)pi\ dexia\ periê/gage, tê\n de\ thate/rou kata\ dia/metron e)p' a)ristera/.]

For the meaning of [Greek: kata\ pleura\n] and [Greek: kata\ dia/metron], referring to the equator and the ecliptic, see the explanation and diagram in Boeckh, Untersuchungen, p. 25, also in the note of Stallbaum. The allusion in Plato to the letter [Greek: chi=] is hardly intelligible without both a commentary and a diagram.]

In regard to the constitution of the kosmical soul, we must note, that as it is intended to know Same, Different, and Same and Different in one--so it must embody these three ingredients in its own nature: according to the received axiom. Like knows like--Like is known by like.[36] Thus began, never to end, the rotatory movements of the living Kosmos or great Kosmical God. The invisible soul of the Kosmos, rooted at its centre and stretching from thence so as to pervade and enclose its visible body, circulates and communicates, though without voice or sound, throughout its own entire range, every impression of identity and of difference which it encounters either from essence ideal and indivisible, or from that which is sensible and divisible. Information is thus circulated, about the existing relations between all the separate parts and specialties.[37] Reason and Science are propagated by the Circle of the Same: Sense and Opinion, by those of the Different. When these last-mentioned Circles are in right movement, the opinions circulated are true and trustworthy.

[Footnote 36: Aristotel. De Animâ, i. 2, 7, i. 3, 11 (pp. 404, b. 16--406 b. 26), with Trendelenburg's note, pp. 227-253; Stallbaum, not. ad Timæum, pp. 136-157. See also the interpretation of Plato's opinion by Krantor, as given in Plutarch, De Animæ Procreatione in Timæo, p. 1012 E. We learn from Plutarch, however, that the passage gave much trouble to commentators.]

[Footnote 37: Plato, Timæus, pp. 36-37. 37 A: [Greek: le/gei kinoume/nê dia\ pa/sês e(autê=s, o(/tô| t' a)/n ti tau)to\n ê(=|, kai\ o(/tou a)\n e(/teron, pro\s o(/, ti te ma/lista kai\ o(/pê| kai\ o(/pôs kai\ o(po/te xumbai/nei kata\ ta\ gigno/mena/ te pro\s e(/kaston e(/kasta ei)=nai kai\ pa/schein, kai\ pro\s ta\ kata\ tau)ta\ e)/chonta a)ei/.]]

[Side-note: Regular or measured Time--began with the Kosmos.]

With the rotations of the Kosmos, began the course of Time--years, months, days, &c. Anterior to the Kosmos, there was no time: no past, present, and future: no numerable or mensurable motion or change. The Ideas are eternal essences, without fluctuation or change: existing _sub specie æternitatis_, and having only a perpetual present, but no past or future.[38] Along with them subsisted only the disorderly, immeasurable, movements of Chaos. The nearest approach which the Demiurgus could make in copying these Ideas, was, by assigning to the Kosmos an eternal and unchanging motion, marked and measured by the varying position of the heavenly bodies. For this purpose, the sun, moon, and planets, were distributed among the various portions of the circle of Different: while the fixed stars were placed in the Circle of the Same, or the outer Circle, revolving in one uniform rotation and in unaltered position in regard to each other. The interval of one day was marked by one revolution of this outer or most rational Circle:[39] that of one month, by a revolution of the moon: that of one year, by a revolution of the sun. Among all these sidereal and planetary Gods the Earth was the first and oldest. It was packed close round the great axis which traversed the centre of the Kosmos, by the turning of which axis the outer circle of the Kosmos was made to revolve, generating night and day. The Earth regulated the movement of this great kosmical axis, and thus become the determining agent and guarantee of night and day.[40]

[Footnote 38: Plato, Timæus, pp. 37-38. Lassalle, in his copious and elaborate explanation of the doctrine of Herakleitus (Die Philosophie Herakleitos des Dunkeln, Berlin, 1858, vol. ii. p. 210, s. 26), represents this doctrine of Plato respecting Time as "durch und durch heraklitisch". To me it seems quite distinct from, or rather the inversion of, that which Lassalle himself sets down as the doctrine of Herakleitus. Plato begins with [Greek: to\ a)i+/dion] or [Greek: ai)ô/nion], an eternal sameness or duration, without succession, change, generation or destruction,--this passes into perpetual succession or change, with frequent generation and destruction. Herakleitus, on the other hand, recognises for his primary or general law perpetual succession, interchange of contraries, generation and destruction; this passes into a secondary state, in which there is temporary duration and sameness of particulars--the flux being interrupted.

The ideal [Greek: lo/gos] or law of Herakleitus is that of unremitting process, flux, revolution, implication of Ens with Non-Ens: the real world is an imperfect manifestation of this law, because each particular clings to existence, and thereby causes temporary halts in the process. Now Plato's starting point is [Greek: to\ ai)ô/nion to\ a)ei\ ô(sau/tôs e)/chon to\ o)/ntôs o)/n]: the perishable world of sense and particulars is the world of process, and is so far degenerate from the eternal uniformity of primordial Ens. See Lassalle, pp. 39-292-319.]

[Footnote 39: Plato, Timæus, p. 39 C. [Greek: ê( tê=s mia=s kai\ phronimôta/tês kuklê/seôs peri/odos]. Plato remarks that there was a particular interval of time measured off and designated by the revolution of each of the other planets, but that these intervals were unnoticed and unknown by the greater part of mankind.]

[Footnote 40: My explanation of this much controverted sentence differs from that of previous commentators. I have given reasons for adopting it in a separate Dissertation ('Plato and the Rotation of the Earth,' Murray), to which I here refer. In that Dissertation I endeavoured to show cause for dissenting from the inference of M. Boeckh: who contends that Plato cannot have believed in the diurnal rotation of the Earth, because he (Plato) explicitly affirms the diurnal rotation of the outer celestial sphere, or Aplanes. These two facts nullify each other, so that the effect would be the same as if there were no rotation of either. My reply to this argument was, in substance, that though the two facts really are inconsistent--the one excluding the other--yet we cannot safely conclude that Plato must have perceived the inconsistency; the more so as Aristotle certainly did not perceive it. To hold incompatible doctrines without being aware of the incompatibility, is a state of mind sufficiently common even in the present advanced condition of science, which I could illustrate by many curious examples if my space allowed. It must have been much more common in the age of Plato than** it is now.

Batteux observes (Traduction et Remarques sur Ocellus Lucanus, ch. iv. p. 116):--"Il y a un maxime qu'on ne doit jamais perdre de vue en discutant les opinions des Anciens: c'est de ne point leur prêter les conséquences de leurs principes, ni les principes de leurs conséquences".

As a general rule, I subscribe to the soundness of this admonition.]

[Side-note: Divine tenants of the Kosmos. Primary and Visible Gods--Stars and Heavenly Bodies.]

It remained for the Demiurgus,--in order that the Kosmos might become a full copy of its model the Generic Animal or Idea of Animal,--to introduce into it those various species of animals which that Idea contained. He first peopled it with Gods: the eldest and earliest of whom was the Earth, planted in the centre as sentinel over night and day: next the fixed stars, formed for the most part of fire, and annexed to the circle of the Same or the exterior circle, so as to impart to it light and brilliancy. Each star was of spherical figure and had two motions,--one, of uniform rotation peculiar to itself,--the other, an uniform forward movement of translation, being carried along with the great outer circle in its general rotation round the axis of the Kosmos.[41] It is thus that the sidereal orbs, animated beings eternal and divine, remained constantly turning round in the same relative position: while the sun, moon, and planets, belonging to the inner circles of the Different, and trying to revolve by their own effort in the opposite direction to the outer sphere, became irregular in their own velocities and variable in their relative positions.[42] The complicated movements of these planetary bodies, alternately approaching and receding--together with their occultations and reappearances, full of alarming prognostic as to consequences--cannot be described without having at hand some diagrams or mechanical illustrations to refer to.[43]

[Footnote 41: Plato, Timæus, p. 40.]

[Footnote 42: Plato, Timæus, p. 40 B. [Greek: o(/s' a)planê= tô=n a)/strôn zô=a thei=a o)/nta kai\ a)i+/dia], &c.]

[Footnote 43: Plato, Timæus, p. 40 D. [Greek: to\ le/gein a)/neu dio/pseôs tou/tôn au)= tô=n mimêma/tôn ma/taios a)\n ei)/ê po/nos.] Plato himself here acknowledges the necessity of diagrams: the necessity was hardly less in the preceding part of his exposition.]

[Side-note: Secondary and generated Gods--Plato's dictum respecting them. His acquiescence in tradition.]

Such were all the primitive Gods visible and generated[44] by the Demiurgus, to preside over and regulate the Kosmos. By them are generated, and from them are descended, the remaining Gods.

[Footnote 44: Plato, Timæ. p. 40 D. [Greek: theô=n o(ratô=n kai\ gennêtô=n].]

Respecting these remaining Gods, however, the Platonic Timæus holds a different language. Instead of speaking in his own name and delivering his own convictions, as he had done about the Demiurgus and the cosmical Gods--with the simple reservation, that such convictions could be proclaimed only as probable and not as demonstratively certain--he now descends to the Sokratic platform of confessed ignorance and incapacity. "The generation of these remaining Gods (he says) is a matter too great for me to understand and declare. I must trust to those who have spoken upon the subject before me--who were, as they themselves said, offspring of the Gods, and must therefore have well known their own fathers. It is impossible to mistrust the sons of the Gods. Their statements indeed are unsupported either by probabilities or by necessary demonstration; but since they here profess to be declaring family traditions, we must obey the law and believe.[45] Thus then let it stand and be proclaimed, upon their authority, respecting the generation of the remaining Gods. The offspring of Uranus and Gæa were, Okeanus and Tethys: from whom sprang Phorkys, Kronus, Rhea, and those along with them. Kronus and Rhea had for offspring Zeus, Hêrê, and all these who are termed their brethren: from whom too, besides, we hear of other offspring. Thus were generated all the Gods, both those who always conspicuously revolve, and those who show themselves only when they please."[46]

[Footnote 45: Plato, Timæus, pp. 40 D-E. [Greek: Peri\ de\ tô=n a)/llôn daimo/nôn ei)pei=n kai\ gnô=nai tê\n ge/nesin mei=zon ê)\ kath' ê(ma=s, peiste/on de\ toi=s ei)rêko/sin e)/mprosthen, e)kgo/nois me\n theô=n ou)=sin, saphô=s de/ pou tou/s ge au)tôn progo/nous ei)do/sin; _a)du/naton ou)=n theô=n paisi\n a)pistei=n, kai/per a)/neu te ei)ko/tôn kai\ a)nagkai/ôn_ a)podei/xeôn le/gousin, a)ll' _ô(s oi)kei=a pha/skousin a)pagge/llein, e)pome/nous tô=| no/mô| pisteute/on_. Ou(/tôs ou)=n _kat' e)kei/nous_ ê(mi=n ê( ge/nesis peri\ tou/tôn tô=n theô=n e)che/tô kai\ lege/sthô.]

So, too, in the Platonic Epinomis, attached as an appendix to the Treatise De Legibus, we find (p. 984) Plato--after arranging his quintuple scale of elemental animals (fire, æther, air, water, earth), the highest and most divine being the stars or visible Gods, the lowest being man, and the three others intermediate between the two; after having thus laid out the scale, he leaves to others to determine, [Greek: o(pê=| tis e)the/lei], in which place Zeus, Hêrê, and the other Gods, are to be considered as lodged. He will not contradict any one's feeling on that point; he strongly protests (p. 985 D) against all attempts on the part of the lawgiver to innovate ([Greek: kainotomei=n]) in contravention of ancient religious tradition--this is what Aristophanes in the Nubes, and Melêtus before the Dikasts, accuse Sokrates of doing--but he denounces harshly all who will not acknowledge with worship and sacrifice the sublime divinity of the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Planets.

The Platonic declaration given here--[Greek: e)pome/nous tô=| no/mô| pisteute/on]--is illustrated in the lines of Euripides, Bacchæ, 202--

[Greek: ou)de\n sophizo/mestha toi=si dai/mosin; patri/ous paradocha/s, a(/s th' o(mê/likas chro/nô| kektê/meth', ou)dei\s au)ta\ katabalei= lo/gos, ou)d' ê)\n di' a)krô=n to\ sopho\n eu(/rêtai phrenô=n.]]

[Footnote 46: Plato, Timæ. p. 41 A. [Greek: e)pei\ d' ou)=n pa/ntes o(/soi te peripolou=si phanerô=s, kai\ o(/soi phai/nontai kath' o(/son a)\n e)the/lôsi, theoi\ ge/nesin e)/schon.]]

[Side-note: Remarks on Plato's Canon of Belief.]

The passage above cited serves to illustrate both Plato's own canon of belief, and his position in regard to his countrymen. The question here is, about the Gods of tradition and of the popular faith: with the paternity and filiation ascribed to them, by Hesiod and the other poets, from whom Greeks of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. learnt their Theogony.[47] Plato was a man both competent and willing to strike out a physical theology of his own, but not to follow passively in the track of orthodox tradition. I have stated briefly what he has affirmed about the cosmical Gods (Earth, Stars, Sun, Planets) generated or constructed by the Demiurgus as portions or members of the Kosmos: their bodies, out of fire and other elements,--their souls out of the Forms or abstractions called Identity and Diversity; while the entire Kosmos is put together after the model of the Generic Idea or Form of Animal. All this, combined with supposed purposes, and fancies of arithmetical proportion dictating the proceedings of the Demiurgus, Plato does not hesitate to proclaim on his own authority and as his own belief--though he does not carry it farther than probability.

[Footnote 47: Herodot. ii. 53.]

But while the feeling of spontaneous belief thus readily arises in Plato's mind, following in the wake of his own constructive imagination and ethical or æsthetical sentiment (_fingunt simul creduntque_)--it does not so readily cleave to the theological dogmas in actual circulation around him. In the generation of Gods from Uranus and Gæa--which he as well as other Athenian youths must have learnt when they recited Hesiod with their schoolmasters--he can see neither proof nor probability: he can find no internal ground for belief.[48] He declares himself incompetent: he will not undertake to affirm any thing upon his own judgment: the mystery is too dark for him to penetrate. Yet on the other hand, though it would be rash to affirm, it would be equally rash to deny. Nearly all around him are believers, at least as well satisfied with their creed as he was with the uncertified affirmations of his own Timæus. He cannot prove them to be wrong, except by appealing to an ethical or æsthetical sentiment which they do not share. Among the Gods said to be descended from Uranus and Gæa, were all those to whom public worship was paid in Greece,--to whom the genealogies of the heroic and sacred families were traced,--and by whom cities as well as individuals believed themselves to be protected in dangers, healed in epidemics, and enlightened on critical emergencies through seasonable revelations and prophecies. Against an established creed thus avouched, it was dangerous to raise any doubts. Moreover Plato could not have forgotten the fate of his master Sokrates;[49] who was indicted both for not acknowledging the Gods whom the city acknowledged, and for introducing other new divine matters and persons. There could be no doubt that Plato was guilty on this latter count: prudence therefore rendered it the more incumbent on him to guard against being implicated in the former count also. Here then Plato formally abnegates his own self-judging power, and submits himself to orthodox authority. "It is impossible to doubt what we have learnt from witnesses, who declared themselves to be the offspring of the Gods, and who must of course have known their own family affairs. We must obey the law and believe." In what proportion such submission, of reason to authority, embodied the sincere feeling of Pascal and Malebranche, or the irony of Bayle and Voltaire, we are unable to determine.[50]

[Footnote 48: The remark made by Condorcet upon Buffon is strikingly applicable to Plato:--"On n'a reproché à M. de Buffon que ses hypothèses. Ce sont aussi des espèces de fables--mais des fables produites par une imagination active qui a besoin de créer, et non par une imagination passive qui cède à des impressions étrangères" (Condorcet, Éloge de Buffon, ad fin.).

[Greek: Au)todi/daktos d' ei)mi/, theo\s de/ moi e)n phresi\n oi)/mas Pantoi/as e)ne/phusen]--(Homer, Odyss. xxii. 347)--the declaration of the bard Phemius.]

[Footnote 49: Xenoph. Memor. i. 1. [Greek: A)dikei= Sôkra/tês, ou(\s me\n ê( po/lis nomi/zei theou/s, ou) nomi/zôn, e(/tera de\ kaina\ daimo/nia ei)sphe/rôn.]

The word [Greek: daimo/nia] may mean matters, or persons, or both together.]

[Footnote 50: M. Martin supposes Plato to speak ironically, or with a prudent reserve, Études sur le Timée, ii. p. 146.

What Plato says here about the Gods who bore personal names, and were believed in by the contemporary public--is substantially equivalent to the well-known profession of ignorance enunciated by the Sophist Protagoras, introduced by him at the beginning of one of his treatises. [Greek: Peri\ de\ theô=n ou)/te ei) ei)si/n, ou)/th' o(poi=oi/ tine/s ei)si, du/namai le/gein; polla\ ga/r e)sti ta\ kôlu/onta/ me] (Sextus Emp. adv. Mathem. ix. 56); a declaration which, circumspect as it was (see the remark of the sillographer Timon in Sextus), drew upon him the displeasure of the Athenians, so that his books were burnt, and himself forced to leave the city.]

[Side-note: Address and order of the Demiurgus to the generated Gods.]

Having thus, during one short paragraph, proclaimed his deference, if not his adhesion, to inspired traditions, Plato again resumes the declaration of his own beliefs and his own book of Genesis, without any farther appeal to authority, and without any intimation that he is touching on mysteries too great for his reason. When these Gods, the visible as well as the invisible,[51] had all been constructed or generated, he (or Timæus) tells us that the Demiurgus addressed them and informed them that they would be of immortal duration--not indeed in their own nature, but through his determination: that to complete the perfection of the newly-begotten Kosmos, there were three other distinct races of animals, all mortal, to be added: that he could not himself undertake the construction of these three, because they would thereby be rendered immortal, but that he confided such construction to them (the Gods): that he would himself supply, for the best of these three new races, an immortal element as guide and superintendent, and that they were to join along with it mortal and bodily accompaniments, to constitute men and animals; thus imitating the power which he had displayed in the generation of themselves.[52]

[Footnote 51: Plato, Timæus, p. 41 A.]

[Footnote 52: Plato, Timæus, p. 41 C. [Greek: tre/pesthe kata\ phu/sin u(mei=s e)pi\ tê\n tô=n zô/ôn dêmiourgi/an, mimou/menoi tê\n e)mê\n du/namin peri\ tê\n u(mete/ran ge/nesin.]]

[Side-note: Preparations for the construction of man. Conjunction of three souls and one body.]

After this address (which Plato puts into the first person, in Homeric manner), the Demiurgus compounded together, again and in the same bowl, the remnant of the same elements out of which he had formed the kosmical soul, but in perfection and purity greatly inferior. The total mass thus formed was distributed into souls equal in number to the stars. The Demiurgus placed each soul in a star of its own, carried it round thus in the kosmical rotation, and explained to it the destiny intended for all. For each alike there was to be an appointed hour of birth, and of conjunction with a body, as well as with two inferior sorts or varieties of soul or mind. From such conjunction would follow, as a necessary consequence, implanted sensibility and motive power, with all its accompaniments of pleasure, pain, desire, fear, anger, and such like. These were the irrational enemies, which the rational and immortal soul would have to controul and subdue, as a condition of just life. If it succeeded in the combat so as to live a good life, it would return after death to the abode of its own peculiar star. But if it failed, it would have a second birth into the inferior nature and body of a female: if, here also, it continued to be evil, it would be transferred after death to the body of some inferior animal. Such transmigration would be farther continued from animal to animal, until the rational soul should acquire thorough controul over the irrational and turbulent. When this was attained, the rational soul would be allowed to return to its original privilege and happiness, residing in its own peculiar star.[53]

[Footnote 53: Plato, Timæus, p. 42 B-D.]

It was thus that the Demiurgus confided to the recently-generated Gods the task of fabricating both mortal bodies, and mortal souls, to be joined with these immortal souls in their new stage of existence--and of guiding and governing the new mortal animal in the best manner, unless in so far as the latter should be the cause of mischief to himself. The Demiurgus decreed and proclaimed this beforehand, in order (says Plato) that he might not himself be the cause of any of the evil which might ensue[54] to individual men.

[Footnote 54: Plato, Timæus, p. 42 D-E. [Greek: Diathesmothetê/sas de\ pa/nta au)toi=s tau=ta, i(/na tê=s e)/peita ei)/ê kaki/as e(ka/stôn a)nai/tios . . . pare/dôke theoi=s sô/mata pla/ttein thnêta/, to/ te e)pi/loipon o(/son e)/t' ê)=n psuchê=s a)nthrôpi/nês de/on prosgene/sthai, tou=to kai\ pa/nth' o(/sa a)ko/loutha e)kei/nois a)pergasame/nous a)/rchein, kai\ kata\ du/namin o(/, ti ka/llista kai\ a)/rista to\ thnêto\n diakuberna=|n zô=on, o(/, ti mê\ kakô=n au)to\ e(autô=| gi/gnoito ai)/tion.]

We have here the theory, intimated but not expanded by Plato, that man is, by misconduct or folly, the cause of all the evil suffered on earth. That the Gods are not the cause of any evil, he tells us in Republ. ii. p. 379. It seems, however, that he did not remain satisfied with the theory of the Timæus, because we find a different theory in the treatise De Legibus (x. p. 896 E)--two kosmical souls, one good, the other evil.

Moreover, the recital of the Timæus itself (besides another express passage in it, pp. 86 D-87 A) plainly contradicts the theory, that man is the cause of his own sufferings and evil. The Demiurgus himself is described as the cause, by directing immortal souls to be joined with mortal bodies. The Demiurgus had constructed a beautiful Kosmos, with perfect and regular rotations--with the Gods, sidereal, planetary, and invisible--and with immortal souls distributed throughout the stars and earth, understanding and appreciating the cosmical rotations. So far all is admirable and faultless. But he is not satisfied with this. He determines to join each of these immortal souls with two mortal souls and with a mortal body. According to Plato's own showing, the immortal soul incurs nothing but corruption, disturbance, and stupidity, by such junction: as Empedokles and Herakleitus had said before (Plut. Solert. Animal. 7, p. 964 E). It is at first deprived of all intelligence ([Greek: a)/nous]); from this stupefaction it gradually but partially recovers; yet nothing short of the best possible education and discipline will enable it to contend, and even then imperfectly, against the corruption and incumbrance arising out of its companion the body; lastly, if it should contend with every success, the only recompense which awaits it is to be re-transferred to the star from whence it came down. What reason was there for removing the immortal soul from its happy and privileged position, to be degraded by forced companionship with an unworthy body and two inferior souls? The reason assigned is, that the Demiurgus required the Kosmos to be enlarged into a full and exact copy of the [Greek: Au)to/zôon] or Generic Animal, which comprehended four subordinate varieties of animals; one of them good (the Gods)--the other three inferior and corrupt, Men, Birds, Fishes. But here, according to Plato's own exposition, it was the Demiurgus himself and his plan that was at fault. What necessity was there to copy the worst parts of the Generic Animal as well as the best? The Kosmos would have been decidedly better, though it might have been less complete, without such unenviable accompaniments. When Plato constructs his own community (Republic and Legg.) he does not knowingly train up defective persons, or prepare the foundation for such, in order that every variety of character may be included. We may add here, according to Plato himself, [Greek: Nou=s] (intelligence or reason) belongs not to all human beings, but only to a small fraction of them (Timæus, p. 51 E). Except in these few, the immortal soul is therefore irrecoverably debased by its union with the body.]

[Side-note: Proceedings of the generated Gods--they fabricate the cranium, as miniature of the Kosmos, with the rational soul rotating within it.]

Accordingly the Gods, sons of the Demiurgus, entered upon the task, trying to imitate their father. Borrowing from the Kosmos portions of the four elements, with engagement that what was borrowed should one day be paid back, they glued them together, and fastened them by numerous minute invisible pegs into one body. Into this body, always decaying and requiring renovation, they introduced the immortal soul, with its double circular rotations--the Circles of the Same and of the Diverse: embodying it in the cranium, which was made spherical in exterior form like the Kosmos, and admitting within it no other motion but the rotatory. The head, the most divine portion of the human system, was made master; while the body was admitted only as subject and ministerial. The body was endowed with all the six varieties of motive power, forward, backwards--upward, downward--to the right, to the left.[55] The phenomena of nutrition and sensation began. But all these irregular movements, and violent multifarious agitations, checked or disturbed the regular rotations of the immortal soul in the cranium, perverting the arithmetical proportion, and harmony belonging to them. The rotations of the Circles of Same and Diverse were made to convey false and foolish affirmation. The soul became utterly destitute of intelligence, on being first joined to the body, and for some time afterwards.[56] But in the course of time the violence of these disturbing currents abates, so that the rotations of the Circles in the head can take place with more quiet and regularity. The man then becomes more and more intelligent. If subjected to good education and discipline, he will be made gradually sound and whole, free from corruption: but if he neglect this precaution, his life remains a lame one, and he returns back to Hades incomplete and unprofitable.[57]

[Footnote 55: Plato, Timæus, pp. 43 B, 44 D.

Plato supposes an etymological connection between [Greek: ai)sthê/seis] and [Greek: a)i+/ssô], p. 43 C.]

[Footnote 56: Plato, Timæus, p. 44 B. [Greek: kai\ dia\ dê\ pa/nta tau=ta ta\ pathê/mata nu=n kat' a)rcha/s te a)/nous psuchê\ gi/gnetai to\ prô=ton, o(/tan ei)s sô=ma e)ndethê=| thnêto/n.]]

[Footnote 57: Plato, Timæus, p. 44 C.]

[Side-note: The cranium is mounted on a tall body--six varieties of motion--organs of sense. Vision--Light.]

The Gods, when they undertook the fabrication of the body, foresaw the inconvenience of allowing the head--with its intelligent rotations, and with the immortal soul enclosed in it--to roll along the ground, unable to get over a height, or out of a hollow.[58] Accordingly they mounted it upon a tall body; with arms and legs as instruments of movement, support, and defence. They caused the movements to be generally directed forward and not backward; since front is more honourable and more commanding than rear. For the same reason, they placed the face, with the organs of sense, in the fore part of the head. Within the eyes, they planted that variety of fire which does not burn, but is called light, homogeneous with the light without. We are enabled to see in the daytime, because the light within our eyes pours out through the centre of them, and commingles with the light without. The two, being thus confounded together, transmit movements from every object which they touch, through the eye inward to the soul; and thus bring about the sensation of sight. At night no vision takes place: because the light from the interior of our eyes, even when it still comes out, finds no cognate light in the air without, and thus becomes extinguished in the darkness. All the light within the eye would thus have been lost, if the Gods had not provided a protection: they contrived the eyelids which drop and shut up the interior light within. This light, being prevented from egress, diffuses itself throughout the interior system, and tranquillises the movements within so as to bring on sleep: without dreams, if all the movements are quenched--with dreams, corresponding to the movements which remain if there are any such.[59]

[Footnote 58: Plato, Timæus, p. 44 D-E. [Greek: i(/n' ou)=n mê\ kulindou/menon e)pi\ gê=s, u(/lê te kai\ ba/thê pantodapa\ e)chou/sês, a)poroi= ta\ me\n u(perbai/nein, e)/nthen de\ e)kbai/nein, o)/chêm' au)tô=| tou=to kai\ eu)pori/an e)/dosan.]]

[Footnote 59: Plato, Timæus, p. 45. The theory of vision here given by Plato is interesting. A theory, similar in the main, had been propounded by Empedoklês before him. Aristotel. De Sensu, p. 437 b.; Theophrast. De Sensu, cap. 5-9, p. 88 of Philipson's [Greek: U(/lê A)nthrôpi/nê]. Aristotle himself impugns the theory. It is reported and discussed in Galen, De Hippocratis et Platonis Dogmat. vii. 5, 6, p. 619 seqq. ed. Kühn.

The different theories of vision among the ancient philosophers anterior to Aristotle are thus enumerated by E. H. von Baumhauer (De Sententiis Veterum Philosophorum Græcorum de Visu, Lumine, et Coloribus, Utrecht, 1843, p. 137):--"De videndi modo tres apud antiquos primarias theorias invenimus: et primam quidem, emanatione lucis ex oculis ad corpora externa, ejusque reflexu ad oculos (Pythagorei, Alcmæon): alteram emanationibus e corporibus, quæ per oculos veluti per canales ad animum penetrent (Eleatici, Heraclitus, Gorgias): quam sententiam Anaxagoras et Diogenes Apolloniates eatenus mutarunt, quod dicerent pupillam quasi speculum esse quod imagines acceptas ad animum rejiciat. Tertia theoria, orta è conjunctione duarum priorum, statuebat tam ex oculis quam corporibus emanationes fieri, et ambarum illarum concursu visum effici, quum conformata imago per meatus ad animum perveniat (Empedocles, Protagoras, Plato). Huic sententiæ etiam Democritus annumerari potest; qui eam planè secundum materiam, ut dicunt, exposuit."

The theory of Plato is described in the same treatise, pp. 106-112.]

[Side-note: Principal advantages of sight and hearing. Observations of the rotation of the Kosmos.]

Such are the auxiliary causes (continues Plato), often mistaken by others for principal causes, which the Gods employed to bring about sight. In themselves, they have no regularity of action: for nothing can be regular in action without mind and intelligence.[60] But the most important among all the advantages of sight is, that it enables us to observe and study the rotations of the Kosmos and of the sidereal and planetary bodies. It is the observed rotations of days, months, and years, which impart to us the ideas of time and number, and enable us to investigate the universe. Hence we derive philosophy, the greatest of all blessings. Hence too we learn to apply the celestial rotations as a rule and model to amend the rotations of intelligence in our own cranium--since the first are regular and unerring, while the second are disorderly and changeful.[61] It was for the like purpose, in view to the promotion of philosophy, that the Gods gave us voice and hearing. Both discourse and musical harmony are essential for this purpose. Harmony and rhythm are presents to us, from the Muses, not, as men now employ them, for unreflecting pleasure and recreation--but for the same purpose of regulating and attuning the disorderly rotations of the soul, and of correcting the ungraceful and unmeasured movements natural to the body.[62]

[Footnote 60: Plato, Timæus, p. 46 D-E.]

[Footnote 61: Plato, Timæus, pp. 47 B-C, 90 C.]

[Footnote 62: Plato, Timæus, p. 47 D-E. [Greek: ê( de\ a(rmoni/a . . . xu/mmachos u(po\ Mousô=n de/dotai; kai\ r(uthmo\s au)= . . . u(po\ tô=n au)tô=n e)do/thê.] Here we see Plato, in the usual Hellenic vein, particularising the functions and attributes of the different Gods and Goddesses.]

[Side-note: The Kosmos is product of joint action of Reason and Necessity. The four visible and tangible elements are not primitive.]

At this point of the exposition, the Platonic Timæus breaks off the thread, and takes up a new commencement. Thus far (he says) we have proceeded in explaining the part of Reason or Intelligence in the fabrication of the Kosmos. We must now explain the part of Necessity: for the genesis of the Kosmos results from co-operation of the two. By necessity (as has been said before) Plato means random, indeterminate, chaotic, pre-existent, spontaneity of movement or force: spontaneity ([Greek: ê( planôme/nê ai)ti/a]) upon which Reason works by persuasion up to a certain point, prevailing upon it to submit to some degree of fixity and regularity.[63] Timæus had described the body of the Kosmos as being constructed by the Demiurgus out of the four elements; thus assuming fire, air, earth, water, as pre-existent. But he now corrects himself, and tells us that such assumption is unwarranted. We must (he remarks) give a better and fuller explanation of the Kosmos. No one of these four elements is either primordial, or permanently distinct and definite in itself.

[Footnote 63: Plato, Timæus, p. 48 A.]

The only primordial reality is, an indeterminate, all-recipient _fundamentum_: having no form or determination of its own, but capable of receiving any form or determination from without.

[Side-note: Forms or Ideas and Materia Prima--Forms of the Elements--Place, or Receptivity.]

In the second explanation now given by Plato of the Kosmos and its genesis, he assumes this invisible _fundamentum_ (which he had not assumed before) as "the mother or nurse of all generation". He assumes, besides, the eternal Forms or Ideas, to act upon it and to bestow determination or quality. These forms fulfil the office of father: the offspring of the two is--the generated, concrete, visible, objects,[64] imitations of the Forms or Ideas, begotten out of this mother. How the Ideas act upon the Materia Prima, Plato cannot well explain: but each Form stamps an imitation or copy of itself upon portions of the common _Fundamentum_.[65]

[Footnote 64: Plato, Timæus, p. 51 A. [Greek: tê\n tou= gegono/tos o(ratou= kai\ pa/ntôs ai)sthêtou= mête/ra kai\ u(podochê/n.]]

[Footnote 65: Plato, Timæus, pp. 50-51. 50 C: [Greek: tupôthe/nta a)p' au)tô=n tro/pon tina\ du/sphraston kai\ thaumasto/n.] 51 A: [Greek: a)no/raton ei)=do/s ti, kai\ a)/morphon, pandeche/s, _metalamba/non de\ a)porô/tata/ pê| tou= noêtou=_ kai\ dusalôto/taton.]]

But do there really exist any such Forms or Ideas--as Fire _per se_, the Generic Fire--Water _per se_, the Generic Water, invisible and intangible?[66] Or is this mere unfounded speech? Does there exist nothing really anywhere, beyond the visible objects which we see and touch?[67]

[Footnote 66: Plato, Timæus, p. 51 C.]

[Footnote 67: Ueberweg, in a learned Dissertation, Ueber die Platonische Weltseele (pp. 52-53), seeks to establish a greater distinction between the Phædrus, Phædon, and Timæus, in respect to the way in which Plato affirms the separate substantiality of Ideas, than the language of the dialogues warrants. He contends that the separate substantiality of the Platonic Ideas is more peremptorily affirmed in the Timæus than in the Phædrus. But this will not be found borne out if we look at Phædrus, p. 247, where the affirmation is quite as peremptory as that in the Timæus; correlating too, as it does in the Timæus, with [Greek: Nou=s] as the contemplating subject. Indeed the point may be said to be affirmed more positively in the Phædrus, because the [Greek: u(peroura/nios to/pos] is assigned to the Ideas, while in the Timæus all [Greek: to/pos] or local existence is denied to them (p. 52 B-C). Sensible objects are presented in the Phædrus as faint resemblances of the archetypal Ideas (p. 250 C), just as they are in the Timæus: on the other hand, [Greek: to\ metalamba/nein tou= noêtou=] occurs in the Timæus (p. 51 A), equivalent to [Greek: to\ mete/chein], which Ueberweg states to be discontinued.]

We must assume (says Plato, after a certain brief argument which he himself does not regard as quite complete) the Forms or Ideas of Fire, Air, Water, Earth, as distinct and self-existent, eternal, indestructible, unchangeable--neither visible nor tangible, but apprehended by Reason or Intellect alone--neither receiving anything else from without, nor themselves moving to anything else. Distinct from these--images of these, and bearing the same name--are the sensible objects called Fire, Water, &c.--objects of sense and opinion--always in a state of transition--generated and destroyed, but always generated in some place and destroyed out of some place. There is to be assumed, besides, distinct from the two preceding--as a third _fundamentum_--the place or receptacle in which these images are localised, generated, and nursed up. This place, or formless primitive receptivity, is indestructible, but out of all reach of sense, and difficult to believe in, inasmuch as it is only accessible by a spurious sort of ratiocination.[68]

[Footnote 68: Plato, Timæus, p. 52 B. [Greek: au)to\ de\ met' a)naisthêsi/as a(pto\n logismô=| tini\ no/thô|, mo/gis pisto/n.]]

[Side-note: Primordial Chaos--Effect of intervention by the Demiurgus.]

Anterior to the construction of the Kosmos, the Forms or Ideas of the four elements had already begun to act upon this primitive recipient or receptacle, but in a confused and irregular way. Neither of the four could impress itself in a special and definite manner: there were some vestiges of each, but each was incomplete: all were in stir and agitation, yet without any measure or fixed rule. Thick and heavy, however, were tending to separate from thin and light, and each particle thus tending to occupy a place of its own.[69] In this condition (the primordial moving chaos of the poets and earlier philosophers), things were found by the Demiurgus, when he undertook to construct the Kosmos. There was no ready made Fire, Water, &c. (as Plato had assumed at the opening of the Timæus), but an agitated _imbroglio_ of all, with the portions tending to separate from each other, and to agglomerate each in a place of its own. The Demiurgus brought these four elements out of confusion into definite bodies and regular movements. He gave to each a body, constructed upon the most beautiful proportions of arithmetic and geometry, as far as this was possible.[70]

[Footnote 69: Plato, Timæus, pp. 52-53. 53 A: [Greek: ta\ te/ttara ge/nê seio/mena u(po\ tê=s dexame/nês, kinoume/nês au)tê=s oi(=on o)rga/nou seismo\n pare/chontos, ta\ me\n a)nomoio/tata plei=ston au)ta\ a)ph' au(tô=n o(ri/zein, ta\ d' o(moio/tata ma/lista ei)s tau)to\n xunôthei=n; dio\ dê\ kai\ chô/ran tau=ta a)/lla a)/llên i)/schein, pri\n kai\ to\ pa=n e)x au)tô=n diakosmêthe\n gene/sthai.] 57 C: [Greek: die/stêke me\n ga\r tou= ge/nous e(ka/stou ta\ plê/thê kata\ to/pon i)/dion dia\ tê\n tê=s dechome/nês ki/nêsin.] 58 C.]

[Footnote 70: Plato, Timæus, p. 53 B. [Greek: to\ de\ ê(=| dunato\n ô(s ka/llista a)/rista/ te e)x ou)ch ou(/tôs e)cho/ntôn to\n theo\n au)ta\ xunista/nai, para\ pa/nta ê(mi=n, ô(s a)ei/, tou=to lego/menon u(parche/tô.]

This is the hypothesis pervading all the Timæus--construction the best and finest which the case admitted. The limitations accompany the assumed purpose throughout.]

[Side-note: Geometrical theory of the elements--fundamental triangles--regular solids.]

Respecting such proportions, the theory which Plato here lays out is admitted by himself to be a novel one; but it is doubtless borrowed, with more or less modification, from the Pythagoreans. Every solid body is circumscribed by plane surfaces: every plane surface is composed of triangles: all triangles are generated out of two--the right-angled isoskeles triangle--and the right-angled scalene or oblong triangle. Of this oblong there are infinite varieties: but the most beautiful is a right-angled triangle, having the hypotenuse twice as long as the lesser of the two other sides.[71] From this sort of oblong triangle are generated the tetrahedron or pyramid--the octahedron--and the eikosihedron: from the equilateral triangle is generated the cube. The cube, as the most stable and solid, was assigned by the Demiurgus for the fundamental structure of earth: the pyramid for that of fire: the octahedron for that of air: the eikosihedron for that of water. The purpose was that the four should be in continuous geometrical proportion: as Fire to Air, so Air to Water: as Air to Water, so Water to Earth. Lastly, the Dodekahedron was assigned as the basis of structure for the spherical Kosmos itself or universe.[72] Upon this arrangement each of the three elements--fire, water, air--passes into the other; being generated from the same radical triangle. But earth does not pass into either of the three (nor either of these into earth), being generated from a different radical triangle. The pyramid, as thin, sharp, and cutting, was assigned to fire as the quickest and most piercing of the four elements: the cube as most solid and difficult to move, was allotted to earth, the stationary element. Fire was composed of pyramids of different size, yet each too small to be visible by itself, and becoming visible only when grouped together in masses: the earth was composed of cubes of different size, each invisible from smallness: the other elements in like manner, each from its respective solid,[73] in exact proportion and harmony, as far as Necessity could be persuaded to tolerate. All the five regular solids were thus employed in the configuration and structure of the Kosmos.[74]

[Footnote 71: Plato, Timæus, pp. 53-54. 53 C: [Greek: a)êthei= lo/gô| dêlou=n].]

[Footnote 72: That Plato intended, by this elaborate geometrical construction, to arrive at a continuous geometrical proportion between the four elements, he tells us (p. 32 A-B), adding the qualifying words [Greek: kath' o(/son ê)=n dunato/n]. M. Boeckh, however (De Platonicâ Corporis Mundani Fabricâ, pp. viii.-xxvi.), has shown that the geometrical proportion cannot be properly concluded from the premisses assumed by Plato:--"Platonis elementorum doctrinam et parum sibi constare, neque omnibus numeris absolutam esse, immo multis incommodis laborare, et divini ingenii lusui magis quam disciplinæ severitati originem debere fatebimur; nec profundiorem et abstrusiorem naturæ cognitionem in eâ sitam esse suspicabimur--in quem errorem etiam Joh. Keplerus, summi ingenii homo, incidit".

Respecting the Dodekahedron, see Zeller, Gesch. der Philos. ii. p. 513, ed. 2nd. There is some obscurity about it. In the Epinomis (p. 981 C) Plato gives the Æther as a fifth element, besides the four commonly known and recited in the Timæus. It appears that Philolaus, as well as Xenokrates, conceived the Dodekahedron as the structural form of Æther (Schol. ad Aristot. Physic. p. 427, a. 16, Brandis): and Xenokrates expressly says, that Plato himself recognised it as such. Zeller dissents from this view, and thinks that nothing more is meant than the implication, that the Dodekahedron can have a sphere described round it more readily than any of the other figures named.

Opponents of Plato remarked that he [Greek: katemathêmatikeu/sato tê\n phu/sin], Schol. ad Aristot. Metaph. A. 985, b. 23, p. 539, Brandis. Aristotle devotes himself in many places to the refutation of the Platonic doctrine on this point; see De Coelo, iii. 8, 306-307, and elsewhere.]

[Footnote 73: Plato, Timæus, p. 56 C. [Greek: o(/pêper ê( tê=s A)na/gkês e(kou=sa peisthei=sa te phu/sis u(pei=ke.]]

[Footnote 74: Plato, Timæus, pp. 55-56.]

Such was the mode of formation of the four so-called elemental bodies.[75] Of each of the four, there are diverse species or varieties: and that which distinguishes one variety of the same element from another variety is, that the constituent triangles, though all similar, are of different magnitudes. The diversity of these combinations, though the primary triangles are similar, is infinite: the student of Nature must follow it out, to obtain any probable result.[76]

[Footnote 75: Plato, Timæus, p. 57 C. [Greek: o(/sa a)/krata kai\ prô=ta sô/mata.]

The Platonist Attikus (ap. Eusebium, Præp. Ev. xv. 7) blames Aristotle for dissenting from Plato on this point, and for recognising the celestial matter as a fifth essence distinct from the four elements. Plato (he says) followed both anterior traditions and self-evident sense ([Greek: tê=| peri\ au)ta\ e)nargei/a|]) in admitting only the four elements, and in regarding all things as either compounds or varieties of these. But Aristotle, thinking to make parade of superior philosophical sagacity, [Greek: proskatêri/thmêse toi=s phainome/nois te/ttarsi sô/masi tê\n pe/mptên ou)si/an, pa/nu me\n lamprô=s kai\ philodô/rôs tê=| phu/sei chrêsa/menos, mê\ sunidô\n de\ _o(/ti ou) nomothetei=n dei= phusiologou=nta, ta\ de\ tê=s phu/seôs au)tê=s e)xistorei=n_.] This last precept is what we are surprised to read in a Platonist of the third century B.C. "When you are philosophising upon Nature, do not lay down the law, but search out the real facts of Nature." It is truly Baconian: it is justly applicable as a caution to Aristotle, against whom Attikus directs it; but it is still more eminently applicable to Plato, against whom he does not direct it.]

[Footnote 76: Plato, Timæus, p. 57 D.]

[Side-note: Varieties of each element.]

Plato next enumerates the several varieties of each element--fire, water, earth.[77] He then proceeds to mention the attributes, properties, affections, &c., of each: which he characterises as essentially relative to a sentient Subject: nothing being absolute except the constituent geometrical figures. You cannot describe these attributes (he says) without assuming (what has not yet been described) the sensitive or mortal soul, to which they are relative.[78] Assuming this provisionally, Plato gives account of Hot and Cold, Hard and Soft, Heavy and Light, Rough and Smooth, &c.[79] Then he describes, first, the sensations of pleasure and pain, common to the whole body--next those of the special senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch.[80] These descriptions are very curious and interesting. I am compelled to pass them over by want of space, and shall proceed to the statements respecting the two mortal souls and the containing organism--which belong to a vein more analogous to that of the other Platonic dialogues.

[Footnote 77: Plato, Timæus, pp. 58-61 C.]

[Footnote 78: Plato, Timæus, p. 61 C-D. [Greek: Prô=ton me\n ou)=n u(pa/rchein ai)/sthêsin dei= toi=s legome/nois (ge/nesin) a)ei/; sarko\s de\ kai\ tô=n peri\ sa/rka ge/nesin, psuchê=s te o(/son thnêto/n, ou(/pô dielêlu/thamen. Tugcha/nei de\ ou)/te tau=ta chôri\s tô=n peri\ ta\ pathê/mata o(/sa ai)sthêtika/, ou)/t' e)kei=na a)/neu tou/tôn dunata\ i(kanô=s lechthê=nai; to\ de\ a(/ma schedo\n ou) dunato/n. U(pothete/on dê\ pro/teron tha/tera, ta\ d' u(/stera u(potethe/nta e)pa/nimen au)=this. I(/na ou)=n e(xê=s ta\ pathê/mata le/gêtai toi=s ge/nesin, e)/stô pro/tera ê(mi=n ta\ peri\ sô=ma kai\ psuchê\n o)/nta.]]

[Footnote 79: Plato, Tim. pp. 62-64 B. Demokritus appears to have held on this point an opinion approaching to that of Plato. See Democr. Frag. ed. Mullach, pp. 204-215: Aristot. Metaph. A. p. 985, b. 15; De Sensu, s. 62-65; Sextus Empiric. adv. Math. vii. 135.

[Greek: Peri\ me\n ou)=n bare/os kai\ kou/phou kai\ sklêrou= kai\ malakou=, e)n tou/tois a)phori/zei--tô=n d' a)/llôn ai)sthêtô=n ou)deno\s ei)=nai phu/sin, a)lla\ pa/nta pa/thê tê=s ai)sthê/seôs a)lloioume/nês.] We may remark that Plato includes hardness and softness, the different varieties of resistance, among the secondary or relative qualities of matter; all that he seems to conceive as absolute are extension and figure, the geometrical conception of matter. In the view of most modern philosophers, resistance is considered as the most obviously and undeniably _absolute_ of all the attributes of matter, as that which serves to prove that matter itself is absolute. Dr. Johnson refuted the doctrine of Berkeley by knocking a stick against the ground; and a similar refutation is adopted in words by Reid and Stewart (see Mill's System of Logic, Book vi. ad finem, also Book i. ch. 3, s. 7-8). To me the fact appealed to by Johnson appears an evidence in favour of Berkeley's theory rather than against it. The Resistant ([Greek: o(\ pare/chei prosbolê\n kai\ e)paphê/n tina], Plato, Sophist. p. 246 A) can be understood only as a correlate of something which is resisted: the fact of sense called Resistance is an indivisible fact, involving the implication of the two. In the first instance it is the resistance experienced to our own motions (A. Bain, The Senses and the Intellect, p. 91, 3rd ed.), and thus involves the feeling of our own spontaneous muscular energy.

The Timæus of Plato is not noticed by Sir W. Hamilton in his very learned and instructive Dissertation on the Primary and Secondary Qualities of Body (notes to his edition of Reid's Works, p. 826), though it bears upon his point more than the Theætêtus, which he mentions.]

[Footnote 80: Plato, Timæus, pp. 65-69 E.]

[Side-note: Construction of man imposed by the Demiurgus upon the secondary Gods. Triple Soul. Distribution thereof in the body.]

The Demiurgus, after having constructed the entire Kosmos, together with the generated Gods, as well as Necessity would permit--imposed upon these Gods the task of constructing Man: the second best of the four varieties of animals whom he considered it necessary to include in the Kosmos. He furnished to them as a basis an immortal rational soul (diluted remnant from the soul of the Kosmos); with which they were directed to combine two mortal souls and a body.[81] They executed their task as well as the conditions of the problem admitted. They were obliged to include in the mortal souls pleasure and pain, audacity and fear, anger, hope, appetite, sensation, &c., with all the concomitant mischiefs. By such uncongenial adjuncts the immortal rational soul was unavoidably defiled. The constructing Gods however took care to defile it as little as possible.[82] They reserved the head as a separate abode for the immortal soul: planting the mortal soul apart from it in the trunk, and establishing the neck as an isthmus of separation between the two. Again the mortal soul was itself not single but double: including two divisions, a better and a worse. The Gods kept the two parts separate; placing the better portion in the thoracic cavity nearer to the head, and the worse portion lower down, in the abdominal cavity: the two being divided from each other by the diaphragm, built across the body as a wall of partition: just as in a dwelling-house, the apartments of the women are separated from those of the men. Above the diaphragm and near to the neck, was planted the energetic, courageous, contentious, soul; so placed as to receive orders easily from the head, and to aid the rational soul in keeping under constraint the mutinous soul of appetite, which was planted below the diaphragm.[83] The immortal soul[84] was fastened or anchored in the brain, the two mortal souls in the line of the spinal marrow continuous with the brain: which line thus formed the thread of connection between the three. The heart was established as an outer fortress for the exercise of influence by the immortal soul over the other two. It was at the same time made the initial point of the veins, the fountain from whence the current of blood proceeded to pass forcibly through the veins round to all parts of the body. The purpose of this arrangement is, that when the rational soul denounces some proceeding as wrong (either on the part of others without, or in the appetitive soul within), it may stimulate an ebullition of anger in the heart, and may transmit from thence its exhortations and threats through the many small blood channels to all the sensitive parts of the body: which may thus be rendered obedient everywhere to the orders of our better nature.[85]

[Footnote 81: Plato, Timæus, p. 69 C.]

[Footnote 82: Plato, Tim. p. 69 D. [Greek: xugkerasa/menoi/ t' au)ta\ a)nagkai/ôs to\ thnêto\n ge/nos xune/thesan. kai\ dia\ tau=ta dê\ sebo/menoi miai/nein to\ thei=on, o(/ ti mê\ pa=sa ê)=n a)na/gkê], &c.]

[Footnote 83: Plato, Timæus, pp. 69-70.]

[Footnote 84: Plato, Timæus, p. 73 B-D.]

[Footnote 85: Plato, Timæus, p. 70 B-C.]

[Side-note: Functions of the heart and lungs. Thoracic soul.]

In such ebullitions of anger, as well as in moments of imminent danger, the heart leaps violently, becoming overheated and distended by excess of fire. The Gods foresaw this, and provided a safeguard against it by placing the lungs close at hand with the wind-pipe and trachea. The lungs were constructed soft and full of internal pores and cavities like a sponge; without any blood,[86]--but receiving, instead of blood, both the air inspired through the trachea, and the water swallowed to quench thirst. Being thus always cool, and soft like a cushion, the lungs received and deadened the violent beating and leaping of the heart; at the same time that they cooled down its excessive heat, and rendered it a more equable minister for the orders of reason.[87]

[Footnote 86: Plato, Timæus, p. 70 C. [Greek: tê\n tou= pleu/monos i)de/an e)nephu/teusan, prô=ton me\n malakê\n kai\ a)/naimon, ei)=ta sê/raggas e)nto\s e)/chousan oi(=on spo/ggou katatetrême/nas.]

Aristotle notices this opinion as held by some persons (not naming Plato), but impugns it as erroneous. He affirms that the lungs have more blood in them than any of the other viscera (Histor. Animal. i. 17, p. 496, b. 1-8; De Respirat. c. 15, p. 478, a. 13).]

[Footnote 87: Plato, Timæus, p. 70.]

[Side-note: Abdominal Soul--difficulty of controuling it--functions of the liver.]

The third or lowest soul, of appetite and nutrition, was placed between the diaphragm and the navel. This region of the body was set apart like a manger for containing necessary food: and the appetitive soul was tied up to it like a wild beast; indispensable indeed for the continuance of the race, yet a troublesome adjunct, and therefore placed afar off, in order that its bellowings might disturb as little as possible the deliberations of the rational soul in the cranium, for the good of the whole. The Gods knew that this appetitive soul would never listen to reason, and that it must be kept under subjection altogether by the influence of phantoms and imagery. They provided an agency for this purpose in the liver, which they placed close upon the abode of the appetitive soul.[88] They made the liver compact, smooth, and brilliant, like a mirror reflecting images:--moreover, both sweet and bitter on occasions. The thoughts of the rational soul were thus brought within view of the appetitive soul, in the form of phantoms or images exhibited on the mirror of the liver. When the rational soul is displeased, not only images corresponding to this feeling are impressed, but the bitter properties of the liver are all called forth. It becomes crumpled, discoloured, dark and rough; the gall bladder is compressed; the veins carrying the blood are blocked up, and pain as well as sickness arise. On the contrary, when the rational soul is satisfied, so as to send forth mild and complacent inspirations,--all this bitterness of the liver is tranquillised, and all its native sweetness called forth. The whole structure becomes straight and smooth; and the images impressed upon it are rendered propitious. It is thus through the liver, and by means of these images, that the rational soul maintains its ascendancy over the appetitive soul; either to terrify and subdue, or to comfort and encourage it.[89]

[Footnote 88: Plato, Timæus, p. 71 A. [Greek: ei)do/tes de\ au)to\ ô(s lo/gou me\n ou)/te xunê/sein e)/mellen, ei)/te pê| kai\ metala/mbanoi tino\s au)= tô=n ai)sthê/seôn, ou)k e)/mphuton au)tô=| to\ me/lein tinô=n e)/soito lo/gôn, u(po\ de\ ei)dô/lôn kai\ phantasma/tôn nukto/s te kai\ meth' ê(me/ran ma/lista psuchagôgê/soito, tou/tô| dê\ theo\s e)pibouleu/sas au)tô=| tê\n tou= ê(/patos i)de/an xune/stêsen.]]

[Footnote 89: Plato, Timæus, p. 71 C-D.]

[Side-note: The liver is made the seat of the prophetic agency. Function of the spleen.]

Moreover, the liver was made to serve another purpose. It was selected as the seat of the prophetic agency; which the Gods considered to be indispensable, as a refuge and aid for the irrational department of man. Though this portion of the soul had no concern with sense or reason, they would not shut it out altogether from some glimpse of truth. The revelations of prophecy were accordingly signified on the liver, for the instruction and within the easy view of the appetitive soul: and chiefly at periods when the functions of the rational soul are suspended--either during sleep, or disease, or fits of temporary ecstasy. For no man in his perfect senses comes under the influence of a genuine prophetic inspiration. Sense and intelligence are often required to interpret prophecies, and to determine what is meant by dreams or signs or prognostics of other kinds: but such revelations are received by men destitute of sense. To receive them, is the business of one class of men: to interpret them, that of another. It is a grave mistake, though often committed, to confound the two. It was in order to furnish prophecy to man, therefore, that the Gods devised both the structure and the place of the liver. During life, the prophetic indications are clearly marked upon it: but after death they become obscure and hard to decipher.[90]

[Footnote 90: Plato, Timæus, pp. 71-72. 71 E: [Greek: i(kano\n de\ sêmei=on, ô(s mantikê\n a)phrosu/nê| theo\s a)nthrôpi/nê| de/dôken; ou)dei\s ga\r e)/nnous e)pha/ptetai mantikê=s e)nthe/ou kai\ a)lêthou=s.]]

The spleen was placed near the liver, corresponding to it on the left side, in order to take off from it any impure or excessive accretions or accumulations, and thus to preserve it clean and pure.[91]

[Footnote 91: Plato, Timæus, p. 72 D.]

Such was the distribution of the one immortal and the two mortal souls, and such the purposes by which it was dictated. We cannot indeed (says Plato) proclaim this with full assurance as truth, unless the Gods would confirm our declarations. We must take the risk of affirming what appears to us probable--and we shall proceed with this risk yet further.[92] The following is the plan and calculation according to which it was becoming that our remaining bodily frame should be put together.

[Footnote 92: Plato, Timæus, p. 72 D-E. [Greek: to\ me\n a)lêthe/s, ô(s ei)/rêtai, theou= xumphê/santos to/t' a)\n ou(/tô mo/nôs dii+schurizoi/metha; to/ ge mê\n ei)ko\s ê(mi=n ei)rêsthai kai\ nu=n kai\ e)/ti ma=llon a)naskopou=si diakinduneute/on to\ pha/nai, kai\ pepha/sthô . . . e)k dê\ logismou= toiou=de xuni/stasthai ma/list' a)\n au)to\ pa/ntôn pre/poi.]]

[Side-note: Length of the intestinal canal, in order that food might not be frequently needed.]

The Gods foresaw that we should be intemperate in our appetite for food and drink, and that we should thus bring upon ourselves many diseases injurious to life. To mitigate this mischief, they provided us with a great length of intestinal canal, but twisted it round so as to occupy but a small space, in the belly. All the food which we introduce remains thus a long time within us, before it passes away. A greater interval elapses before we need fresh supplies of food. If the food passed away speedily, so that we were constantly obliged to renew it, and were therefore always eating--the human race would be utterly destitute of intelligence and philosophy. They would be beyond the controul of the rational soul.[93]

[Footnote 93: Plato, Timæus, p. 73 A.]

[Side-note: Bone--Flesh--Marrow.]

Bone and flesh come next to be explained. Both of them derive their origin from the spinal marrow: in which the bonds of life are fastened, and soul is linked with body--the root of the human race. The origin of the spinal marrow itself is special and exceptional. Among the triangles employed in the construction of all the four elements, the Gods singled out the very best of each sort. Those selected were combined harmoniously with each other, and employed in the formation of the spinal marrow, as the universal seed ground ([Greek: panspermi/an]) for all the human race. In this marrow the Gods planted the different sorts of souls; distributing and accommodating the figure of each portion of marrow to the requirements of each different soul. For that portion (called the encephalon, as being contained in the head) which was destined to receive the immortal soul, they employed the spherical figure and none other: for the remaining portion, wherein the mortal soul was to be received, they employed a mixture of the spherical and the oblong. All of it together was called by the same name _marrow_, covered and protected by one continuous bony case, and established as the holding ground to fasten the whole extent of soul with the whole extent of body.[94]

[Footnote 94: Plato, Timæus, p. 73 C-D.]

[Side-note: Nails--Mouth--Teeth. Plants produced for nutrition of man.]

Plato next explains the construction of ligaments and flesh--of the mouth, tongue, teeth, and lips: of hair and nails.[95] These last were produced with a long-sighted providence: for the Gods foresaw that the lower animals would be produced from the degeneration of man, and that to them nails and claws would be absolutely indispensable: accordingly, a sketch or rudiment of nails was introduced into the earliest organisation of man.[96] Nutrition being indispensable to man, the Gods produced for this purpose plants (trees, shrubs, herbs, &c.)--with a nature cognate to that of man, but having only the lowest of the three human souls.[97] They then cut ducts and veins throughout the human body, in directions appropriate for distributing the nutriment everywhere. They provided proper structures (here curiously described) for digestion, inspiration, and expiration.[98] The constituent triangles within the body, when young and fresh, overpower the triangles, older and weaker, contained in the nutritive matters swallowed, and then appropriate part of them to the support and growth of the body: in old age, the triangles within are themselves overpowered, and the body decays. When the fastenings, whereby the triangles in the spinal marrow have been fitted together, are worn out and give way, they let go the fastenings of the soul also. The soul, when thus released in a natural way, flies away with delight. Death in this manner is pleasurable: though it is distressing, when brought on violently, by disease or wounds.[99]

[Footnote 95: Plato, Tim. pp. 75-76.]

[Footnote 96: Plat. Tim. p. 76 E. [Greek: o(/then e)n a)nthrô/pois eu)thu\s gignome/nois _u(petupô/santo_ tê\n tô=n o)nu/chôn ge/nesin.]]

[Footnote 97: Plat. Tim. p. 77 B-C.]

[Footnote 98: Plat. Tim. pp. 78-79.]

[Footnote 99: Plat. Tim. p. 81.]

[Side-note: General view of Diseases and their Causes.]

Here Plato passes into a general survey of diseases and the proper treatment of them. "As to the source from whence diseases arise (he says) this is a matter evident to every one. They arise from unnatural excess, deficiency, or displacement, of some one or more of the four elements (fire, air, water, earth) which go to compose the body."[100] If the element in excess be fire, heat and continuous fever are produced: if air, the fever comes on alternate days: if water (a duller element), it is a tertian fever: if earth, it is a quartan--since earth is the dullest and most sluggish of the four.[101]

[Footnote 100: Plat. Tim. p. 81 E. [Greek: to\ de\ tô=n no/sôn o(/then xuni/statai, dê=lo/n pou kai\ panti/.]]

[Footnote 101: Plat. Tim. p. 86 A. [Greek: to\ de\ gê=s, teta/rtôs o)\n nôthe/staton tou/tôn.]]

[Side-note: Diseases of mind--wickedness is a disease--no man is voluntarily wicked.]

Having dwelt at considerable length on the distempers of the body, the Platonic Timæus next examines those of the soul, which proceed from the condition of the body.[102] The generic expression for all distemper of the soul is, irrationality--unreason--absence of reason or intelligence. Of this there are two sorts--madness and ignorance. Intense pleasures and pains are the gravest cause of madness.[103] A man under either of these two influences--either grasping at the former, or running away from the latter, out of season--can neither see nor hear any thing rightly. He is at that moment mad and incapable of using his reason. When the flow of sperm round his marrow is overcharged and violent, so as to produce desires with intense throes of uneasiness beforehand and intense pleasure when satisfaction arrives,--his soul is really distempered and irrational, through the ascendancy of his body. Yet such a man is erroneously looked upon in general not as distempered, but as wicked voluntarily, of his own accord. The truth is, that sexual intemperance is a disorder of the soul arising from an abundant flow of one kind of liquid in the body, combined with thin bones or deficiency in the solids. And nearly all those intemperate habits which are urged as matters of reproach against a man--as if he were bad willingly,--are urged only from the assumption of an erroneous hypothesis. No man is bad willingly, but only from some evil habit of body and from wrong or perverting treatment in youth; which is hostile to his nature, and comes upon him against his own will.[104]

[Footnote 102: Plato, Timæus, p. 86 B. [Greek: Kai\ ta\ me\n peri\ to\ sô=ma nosê/mata tau/tê| xumbai/nei gigno/mena, ta\ de\ peri\ psuchê\n dia\ sô/matos e(/xin tê=|de.]]

[Footnote 103: Plato, Timæus, p. 86 B. [Greek: no/son me\n dê\ psuchê=s a)/noian xugchôrête/on. Du/o d' a)noi/as ge/nê, to\ me\n mani/an, to\ de\ a)mathi/an.]]

[Footnote 104: Plato, Timæus, p. 86 C-D.]

[Side-note: Badness of mind arises from body.]

Again, not merely by way of pleasures, but by way of pains also, the body operates to entail evil or wickedness on the soul. When acid or salt phlegm--when bitter and bilious humours--come to spread through the body, remaining pent up therein, without being able to escape by exhalation,--the effluvia which ought to have been exhaled from them become confounded with the rotation of the soul, producing in it all manner of distempers. These effluvia attack all the three different seats of the soul, occasioning great diversity of mischiefs according to the part attacked--irascibility, despondency, rashness, cowardice, forgetfulness, stupidity. Such bad constitution of the body serves as the foundation of ulterior mischief. And when there supervene, in addition, bad systems of government and bad social maxims, without any means of correction furnished to youth through good social instruction--it is from these two combined causes, both of them against our own will, that all of us who are wicked become wicked. Parents and teachers are more in fault than children and pupils. We must do our best to arrange the bringing up, the habits, and the instruction, so as to eschew evil and attain good.[105]

[Footnote 105: Plato, Timæus, p. 87 A-C.]

[Side-note: Preservative and healing agencies against disease--well-regulated exercise, of mind and body proportionally.]

After thus describing the causes of corruption, both in body and mind, Plato adverts to the preservative and corrective agencies applicable to them. Between the one and the other, constant proportion and symmetry must be imperatively maintained. When the one is strong, and the other weak, nothing but mischief can ensue.[106] Mind must not be exercised alone, to the exclusion of body; nor body alone, without mind. Each must be exercised, so as to maintain adequate reaction and equilibrium against the other.[107] We ought never to let the body be at rest: we must keep up within it a perpetual succession of moderate shocks, so that it may make suitable resistance against foreign causes of movement, internal and external.[108] The best of all movements is, that which is both in itself and made by itself: analogous to the self-continuing rotation both of the Kosmos and of the rational soul in our cranium.[109] Movement in itself, but by an external agent, is less good. The worst of all is, movement neither in itself nor by itself. Among these three sorts of movement, the first is, Gymnastic: the second, propulsion backwards and forwards in a swing, gestation in a carriage: the third is, purgation or medicinal disturbance.[110] This last is never to be employed, except in extreme emergencies.

[Footnote 106: Plat. Tim. pp. 87-88 A.]

[Footnote 107: Plat. Tim. p. 88 C.]

[Footnote 108: Plat. Tim. p. 88 D-E.]

[Footnote 109: Plat. Tim. p. 89 A. [Greek: tô=n d' au)= kinê/seôn ê( e)n e(autô=| u(ph' e(autou= a)ri/stê ki/nêsis; ma/lista ga\r tê=| dianoêtikê=| kai\ tê=| tou= panto\s kinê/sei xuggenê/s; ê( d' u(p' a)/llou chei/rôn.]]

[Footnote 110: Plat. Tim. p. 89 A. [Greek: deute/ra de\ ê( dia\ tô=n ai)ôrê/seôn].

Foes, in the Oeconomia Hippocratica v. [Greek: Ai)ô/ra], gives information about these _pensiles gestationes_, upon which the ancient physicians bestowed much attention.]

[Side-note: Treatment proper for mind alone, apart from body--supremacy of the rational soul must be cultivated.]

We must now indicate the treatment necessary for mind alone, apart from body. It has been already stated, that there are in each of us three souls, or three distinct varieties of soul; each having its own separate place and special movements. Of these three, that which is most exercised must necessarily become the strongest: that which is left unexercised, unmoved, at rest or in indolence,--will become the weakest. The object to be aimed at is, that all three shall be exercised in harmony or proportion with each other. Respecting the soul in our head, the grandest and most commanding of the three, we must bear in mind that it is this which the Gods have assigned to each man as his own special Dæmon or presiding Genius. Dwelling as it does in the highest region of the body, it marks us and links us as akin with heaven--as a celestial and not a terrestrial plant, having root in heaven and not in earth. It is this encephalic or head-soul, which, connected with and suspended from the divine soul of the Kosmos, keeps our whole body in its erect attitude. Now if a man neglects this soul, directing all his favour and development towards the two others (the energetic or the appetitive),--all his judgments will infallibly become mortal and transient, and he himself will be degraded into a mortal being, as far as it is possible for man to become so. But if he devotes himself to study and meditation on truth, exercising the encephalic soul more than the other two--he will assuredly, if he seizes truth,[111] have his mind filled with immortal and divine judgments, and will become himself immortal, as far as human nature admits of it. Cultivating as he does systematically the divine element within him, and having his in-dwelling Genius decorated as perfectly as possible, he will be eminently well-inspired or happy.[112]

[Footnote 111: Plato, Timæus, p. 90 C. [Greek: a)/n per a)lêthei/as e)pha/ptêtai.]]

[Footnote 112: Plato, Timæus, p. 90 B-D. [Greek: e)/chonta/ te au)to\n eu)= ma/la kekosmême/non to\n dai/mona xu/noikon e)n au(tô=|, diaphero/ntôs eu)dai/mona ei)=nai.]

It is hardly possible to translate this play upon the word [Greek: eu)dai/môn].]

[Side-note: We must study and understand the rotations of the Kosmos--this is the way to amend the rotations of the rational soul.]

The mode of cultivating or developing each soul is the same--to assign to each the nourishment and the movement which is suitable to it. Now the movements which are kindred and congenial to our divine encephalic soul, are--the rotations of the Kosmos and the intellections traversing the Kosmical soul. It is these that we ought to follow and study. By learning and embracing in our minds the rotations and proportions of the Kosmos, we shall assimilate the comprehending subject to the comprehended object, and shall rectify that derangement of our own intra-cranial rotations, which was entailed upon us by our birth into a body. By such assimilation, we shall attain the perfection of the life allotted to us, both at present and for the future.[113]

[Footnote 113: Plato, Timæus, pp. 90 D, 91 C-D. The phrase of Plato in describing the newly introduced mode of procreation--[Greek: ô(s ei)s a)/rouran tê\n mê/tran a)o/rata u(po\ smikro/têtos kai\ a)dia/plasta zô=a kataspei/rantes]--is remarkable, as it might be applied to the spermatozoa, which nevertheless he cannot have known.]

[Side-note: Construction of women, birds, quadrupeds, fishes, &c., all from the degradation of primitive man.]

We have thus--says the Platonic Timæus in approaching his conclusion--gone through all those matters which we promised at the beginning, from the first construction of the Kosmos to the genesis of man. We must now devote a few words to the other animals. All of these derive their origin from man, by successive degradations. The first transition is from man into woman. Men whose lives had been characterised by cowardice or injustice, were after death and in their second birth born again as women. It was then that the Gods planted in us the sexual impulse, reconstructing the bodily organism with suitable adjustment, on the double pattern, male and female.[114]

[Footnote 114: Plat. Tim. p. 91 D. Whoever compares the step of marked degeneration here indicated--in passing from men to women--with that which is affirmed by Plato in the fifth book of the Republic about the character, attributes, and capacities of women, will recognise a material difference between the two.]

Such was the genesis of women, by a partial transformation and diversification of the male structure.

We next come to birds; who are likewise a degraded birth or formation, derived from one peculiar mode of degeneracy in man: hair being transmuted into feathers and wings. Birds were formed from the harmless, but light, airy, and superficial men; who, though carrying their minds aloft to the study of kosmical phenomena, studied them by visual observation and not by reason, foolishly imagining that they had discovered the way of reaching truth.[115]

[Footnote 115: Plato, Timæus, p. 91 E.]

The more brutal land animals proceeded from men totally destitute of philosophy, who neither looked up to the heavens nor cared for celestial objects: from men making no use whatever of the rotations of their encephalic soul, but following exclusively the guidance of the lower soul in the trunk. Through such tastes and occupations, both their heads and their anterior limbs became dragged down to the earth by the force of affinity. Moreover, when the rotations of the encephalic soul, from want of exercise, became slackened and fell into desuetude, the round form of the cranium was lost, and converted into an oblong or some other form. These men thus degenerated into quadrupeds and multipeds: the Gods furnishing a greater number of feet in proportion to the stupidity of each, in order that its approximations to earth might be multiplied. To some of the more stupid, however, the Gods gave no feet nor limbs at all; constraining them to drag the whole length of their bodies along the ground, and to become Reptiles.[116]

[Footnote 116: Plato, Timæus, pp. 91-92.]

Out of the most stupid and senseless of mankind, by still greater degeneracy, the Gods formed Fishes or Aquatic Animals:--the fourth and lowest genus, after Men, Birds, Land-Animals. This race of beings, from their extreme want of mind, were not considered worthy to live on earth, or to respire thin and pure air. They were condemned to respire nothing but deep and turbid water, many of them, as oysters, and other descriptions of shellfish, being fixed down at the lowest depth or bottom.[117]

[Footnote 117: Plato, Timæus, p. 92 B.]

It is by such transitions (concludes the Platonic Timæus) that the different races of animals passed originally, and still continue to pass, into each other. The interchange is determined by the acquisition or loss of reason or irrationality.[118]

[Footnote 118: Plato, Timæus, p. 92 B. [Greek: kai\ kata\ tau=ta dê\ pa/nta _to/te kai\ nu=n diamei/betai ta\ zô=a ei)s a)/llêla_, nou= kai\ a)noi/as a)pobolê=| kai\ ktê/sei metaballo/mena.]]

* * * * *

[Side-note: Large range of topics introduced in the Timæus.]

The vast range of topics, included in this curious exposition, is truly remarkable: Kosmogony or Theogony, First Philosophy, Physics (resting upon Geometry and Arithmetic), Zoology, Physiology, Anatomy, Pathology, Therapeutics, mental as well as physical. Of all these, I have not been able to furnish more than scanty illustrations; but the whole are well worthy of study, as the conjectures of a great and ingenious mind in the existing state of knowledge and belief among the Greeks: and all the more worthy, because they form in many respects a striking contrast with the points of view prevalent in more recent times.

[Side-note: The Demiurgus of the Platonic Timæus--how conceived by other philosophers of the same century.]

The position and functions of the Demiurgus, in the Timæus, form a peculiar phase in Grecian Philosophy, and even in the doctrine of Plato himself: for the theology and kosmology of the Timæus differ considerably from what we read in the Phædrus, Politikus, Republic, Leges, &c. The Demiurgus is presented in Timæus as a personal agent, pre-kosmical and extra-kosmical: but he appears only as initiating; he begets or fabricates, once for all, a most beautiful Kosmos (employing all the available material, so that nothing more could afterwards be added). The Kosmos having body and soul, is itself a God, but with many separate Gods resident within it, or attached to it. The Demiurgus then retires, leaving it to be peopled and administered by the Gods thus generated, or by its own soul. His acting and speaking is recounted in the manner of the ancient mythes: and many critics, ancient as well as modern, have supposed that he is intended by Plato only as a mythical personification of the Idea Boni: the construction described being only an ideal process, like the generation of a geometrical figure.[119] Whatever may have been Plato's own intention, in this last sense his hypothesis was interpreted by his immediate successors, Speusippus and Xenokrates, as well as by Eudêmus.[120] Aristotle in his comments upon Plato takes little notice of the Demiurgus: the hypothesis (of a distinct personal constructive agent) did not fit into his _principia_ of the Kosmos, and he probably ranked it among those mythical modes of philosophising which he expressly pronounces to be unworthy of serious criticism.[121] Various succeeding philosophers also, especially the Stoics, while they insisted much upon Providence, conceived this as residing in the Kosmos itself, and in the divine intra-kosmical agencies.

[Footnote 119: Stallbaum, Proleg. ad Timæum, p. 47.

Zeller, Platonische Studien, pp. 207-215; also his Gesch. d. Phil. d. Griech. vol. ii. p. 508 seq. ed. 2nd; and Susemihl, Genetische Entwicklung der Platon. Philosophie, vol. ii. pp. 322-340. Ueberweg, Ueber die Platon. Welt-seele, p. 69; Brandis, Gesch. der Griech. Philos. ii. cx. pp. 357-365.

A good note of Ast (Platon's Leben und Schriften, p. 363 seq.) illustrates the analogy between the Platonic Timæus and the old Greek cosmogonic poems.]

[Footnote 120: Respecting Speusippus and Xenokrates, see Aristotel. De Coelo, i. 10, pp. 279-280, with Scholia, 487, b. 37, 488, b. 15, 489, a. 10, Brandis. Respecting Eudemus, Krantor, Eudorus, and the majority of the Platonic followers, see Plutarch, De Animæ Procreatione in Timæo, 1012 D, 1013 A, 1015 D, 1017 B, 1028 B.

Plutarch reasons against them; but he recognises their interpretation as the predominant one.

See also the view ascribed to Speusippus and the Pythagoreans by Aristotle (Metaphys. A. 1072, a. 1, b. 30).]

[Footnote 121: Proklus ad Platon. Tim. ii. pp. 138 E, 328, ed. Schn.: [Greek: ê)\ ga\r mo/nos ê)\ ma/lista, Pla/tôn tê=| a)po\ tou= pronoou=ntos ai)ti/a| katechrê/sato, phêsi\n o( Theo/phrastos, tou=to/ ge kalô=s au)tô=| marturô=n.] And another reference to Theophrastus, in Proklus, pp. 117, 417 Schn. Also pp. 118 E-F, 279 Schn.: [Greek: A)ristote/lês me\n ou)=n tê\n e)n tô=| dêmiourgô=| ta/xin ou)k oi)=den . . . o( de\ Pla/tôn O)rphei= sunepo/menos e)n tô=| dêmiourgô=| prô=ton ei)=nai phêsi tê\n ta/xin, kai\ to\ pro\ tô=n merô=n o(/lon.] For further coincidences between the Platonic Timæus and Orpheus ([Greek: o( theolo/gos]) see Proklus ad Timæ. pp. 233-235, Schn. The passage of Aristotle respecting those who blended mythe and philosophy is remarkable, Metaphys. B. 1000, a. 9-20. [Greek: Oi( me\n ou)=n peri\ Ê(si/odon, kai\ pa/ntes o(/soi theolo/goi, mo/non e)phro/ntisan tou= pithanou= tou= pro\s au)tou/s, ê(mô=n d' ô)ligô/rêsan . . . A)lla\ peri\ me\n tô=n muthikô=s sophizome/nôn ou)k a)/xion meta\ spoudê=s skopei=n; para\ de\ tô=n di' a)podei/xeôs lego/ntôn dei= puntha/nesthai dierôtô=ntas], &c. About those whom Aristotle calls [Greek: oi( memigme/noi] (partly mythe, partly philosophy), see Metaphys. N. 1091, b. 8.

Compare, on Aristotle's non-recognition of the Platonic Demiurgus, a remarkable note of Prantl, ad Aristot. Physica, viii. p. 524, also p. 478, in his edition of that treatise, Leipsic, 1854. Weisse speaks to the same effect in his translation of the Physica of Aristotle, pp. 350-356, Leips. 1829.

Lichtenstädt, in his ingenious work, (Ueber Platon's Lehren auf dem Gebiete der Natur-Forschung und der Heilkunde, Leipsic, 1826), ranks several of the characteristic tenets of the Timæus as only mythical: the pre-existent Chaos, the divinity of the entire Kosmos, even the metempsychosis, though it is affirmed most directly,--see pp. 24, 46, 48, 86, &c. How much of all this Plato intended as purely mythical, appears to me impossible to determine. I agree with the opinion of Ueberweg, that Plato did not draw any clear line in his own mind between the mythical and the real (Ueber die Platon. Weltseele, pp. 70-71).]

[Side-note: Adopted and welcomed by the Alexandrine Jews, as a parallel to the Mosaic Genesis.]

But though the idea of a pre-kosmic Demiurgus found little favour among the Grecian schools of philosophy, before the Christian era--it was greatly welcomed among the Hellenising Jews at Alexandria, from Aristobulus (about B. C. 150) down to Philo. It formed the suitable point of conjunction, between Hellenic and Judaic speculation. The marked distinction drawn by Plato between the Demiurgus, and the constructed or generated Kosmos, with its in-dwelling Gods--provided a suitable place for the Supreme God of the Jews, degrading the Pagan Gods in comparison. The Timæus was compared with the book of Genesis, from which it was even affirmed that Plato had copied. He received the denomination of the atticising Moses: Moses writing in Attic Greek.[122] It was thus that the Platonic Timæus became the medium of transition, from the Polytheistic theology which served as philosophy among the early ages of Greece, to the omnipotent Monotheism to which philosophy became subordinated after the Christian era.]

[Footnote 122: The learned work of Gfrörer--Philo und die Jüdisch-Alexandrin. Theosophie--illustrates well this coalescence of Platonism with the Pentateuch in the minds of the Hellenising Jews at Alexandria. "Aristobulus maintained, 150 years earlier than Philo, that not only the oldest Grecian poets, Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, &c., but also the most celebrated thinkers, especially Plato, had acquired all their wisdom from a very old translation of the Pentateuch" (Gfrörer, i. p. 308, also ii. 111-118). The first form of Grecian philosophy which found favour among the Alexandrine Jews was the Platonic:--"since a Jew could not fail to be pleased--besides the magnificent style and high moral tone--with a certain likeness between the Oriental Kosmogonies and the Timæus, the favourite treatise of all Theosophists," see p. 72. Compare the same work, pp. 78-80-167-184-314.

Philo calls Sokrates [Greek: a)nê\r para\ Môu+sei= ta\ prote/leia tê=s sophi/as a)nadidachthei/s]: he refers to the terminology of the Platonic Timæus (Gfrörer, 308-327-328).

Eusebius (Præp. Ev. ix. 6, xi. 10), citing Aristobulus and Numenius, says [Greek: Ti/ ga\r e)/sti Pla/tôn, ê)\ Môu+sê\s a)ttiki/zôn?] Compare also the same work, xi. 16-25-29, and xiii. 18, where the harmony between Plato and Moses, and the preference of the author for Plato over other Greek philosophers, are earnestly declared.

See also Vacherot, Histoire Critique de l'École d'Alexandrie, vol. i. pp. 110-163-319-335.]

[Side-note: Physiology of the Platonic Timæus--subordinate to Plato's views of ethical teleology. Triple soul--each soul at once material and mental.]

Of the vast outline sketched in the Timæus, no part illustrates better the point of view of the author, than what is said about human anatomy and physiology. The human body is conceived altogether as subservient to an ethical and æsthetical teleology: it is (like the Praxitelean statue of Eros[123]) a work adapted to an archetypal model in Plato's own heart--his emotions, preferences, antipathies.[124] The leading idea in his mind is, What purposes would be most suitable to the presumed character of the Demiurgus, and to those generated Gods who are assumed to act as his ministers? The purposes which Plato ascribes, both to the one and to the others, emanate from his own feelings: they are such as he would himself have aimed at accomplishing, if he had possessed demiurgic power: just as the Republic describes the principles on which he would have constituted a Commonwealth, had he been lawgiver or Oekist. His inventive fancy depicts the interior structure, both of the great Kosmos and of its little human miniature, in a way corresponding to these sublime purposes. The three souls, each with its appropriate place and functions, form the cardinal principle of the organism:[125] the unity of which is maintained by the spinal marrow in continuity with, the brain; all the three souls having their roots in different parts of this continuous line. Neither of these three souls is immaterial, in the sense which that word now bears: even the encephalic rational soul--the most exalted in function, and commander of the other two--has its own extension and rotatory motion: as the kosmical soul has also, though yet more exalted in its endowments. All these souls have material properties, and are implicated essentially with other material agents:[126] all are at once material and mental. The encephalic or rational soul has its share in material properties, while the abdominal or appetitive soul also has its share in mental properties: even the liver has for its function to exhibit images impressed by the rational soul, and to serve as the theatre of prophetic representations.[127]

[Footnote 123: [Greek: Praxite/lês o(\n e)/pasche diêkri/bôsen E)/rôta e)x i)di/ês e(/lkôn a)rche/tupon kradi/ês]--(Anthologia).]

[Footnote 124: Plato says (Tim. p. 53 E) that in investigating the fundamental configuration of the elements you must search for the most beautiful: these will of course be the true ones. Again, p. 72 E, [Greek: e)k dê\ logismou= toi/oude xuni/stasthai ma/list' a)\n au(tô=| pa/ntôn pre/poi.] Galen applies an analogous principle of reasoning to explain the structure of apes, whom he pronounces to be a caricature of man. Man having a rational and intelligent soul, Nature has properly attached to it an admirable bodily organism: with equal propriety she has assigned to the ape a ridiculous bodily organism, because he has a ridiculous soul--[Greek: le/xeien a)\n ê( phu/sis, geloi/ô| tê\n psuchê\n zô/ô| geloi/an e)chrê=n dothê=nai sô/matos kataskeuê/n] (De Usu Partium, i. c. 13, pp. 80-81, iii. 16, p. 284, xiii. 2, p. 126, xv. 8, p. 252, Kühn).]

[Footnote 125: Respecting a view analogous to that of Plato, M. Littré observes, in his Proleg. to the Hippokratic treatise [Greek: Peri\ Kardi/ês] (OEuvres d'Hippocrate T. ix. p. 77):--"Deux fois l'auteur s'occupe des fins de la structure (du coeur) et admire avec quelle habileté elles sont atteintes. La première, c'est à propos des valvules sigmöides: il est instruit de leur usage, qui est de fermer le coeur du côté de l'artère; et dès-lors, son admiration ne se méprend pas, quand il fait remarquer avec quelle exactitude ils accomplissent leur office. Mais elle se méprend quand, se tournant vers les oreillettes, elle loue la main de l'artiste habile qui les a si bien arrangées pour souffler l'air dans le coeur. Ces déceptions de la téléologie sont perpétuelles dans l'histoire de la science; à chaque instant, on s'est extasié devant des structures que l'imagination seule appropriait à certaines fonctions. 'Cet optimisme' (dit Condorcet dans son Fragment sur l'Atlantide) 'qui consiste à trouver tout à merveille dans la nature telle qu'on l'invente, à condition d'admirer également sa sagesse, si par malheur on avait découvert qu'elle a suivi d'autres combinaisons; cet optimisme de détail doit être banni de la philosophie, dont le but n'est pas d'admirer, mais de connaître; qui, dans l'étude, cherche la vérité, et non des motifs de reconnaissance.'"]

[Footnote 126: Proklus could hardly make out that Plato recognised any [Greek: psuchê\n a)me/thekton], ad Tim. ii. pp. 220, 94 A.]

[Footnote 127: Plat. Tim. p. 71 B-C. The criticism of Aristotle (De Partibus Animal. iv. 2, 676, b. 21) is directed against this doctrine, but without naming Plato. But when Aristotle says [Greek: Oi( le/gontes tê\n phu/sin tê=s cholê=s ai)sthê/seôs tino\s ei)=nai sêmei=on, ou) kalô=s le/gousin], he substitutes the _bile_ in place of the liver. In Aristotle's mind the two are intimately associated.]

[Side-note: Triplicity of the soul--espoused afterwards by Galen.]

The Platonic doctrine, of three souls in one organism, derives a peculiar interest from the earnest way in which it is espoused afterwards by Galen. This last author represents Plato as agreeing in main doctrines with Hippokrates. He has composed nine distinct Dissertations or Books, for the purpose of upholding their joint doctrines. But the agreement which he shows between Hippokrates and Plato is very vague, and his own agreement with Plato is rather ethical than physiological. What is the essence of the three souls, and whether they are immortal or not, Galen leaves undecided:[128] but that there must be three distinct souls in each human body, and that the supposition of one soul only is an absurdity--he considers Plato to have positively demonstrated. He rejects the doctrine of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Poseidonius, and others, who acknowledged only one soul, lodged in the heart, but with distinct co-existent powers.[129]

[Footnote 128: Galen, De Foetuum Formatione, p. 701, Kühn. [Greek: Peri\ Ou)si/as tô=n phusikô=n duna/meôn], p. 763. [Greek: Peri\ tô=n tê=s psuchê=s Ê)thô=n], p. 773.]

[Footnote 129: Galen, De Hipp. et Plat. Dogm. iii. pp. 337-347, Kühn, vi. pp. 515-516, i. p. 200, iv. p. 363, ix. p. 727.]

[Side-note: Admiration of Galen for Plato--his agreement with Plato, and his dissension from Plato--his improved physiology.]

So far Galen concurs with Plato. But he connects this triplicity of soul with a physiological theory of his own, which he professes to derive from, or at least to hold in common with, Hippokrates and Plato. Galen recognises three [Greek: a)rcha\s]--_principia_, beginnings, originating and governing organs--in the body: the brain, which is the origin of all the nerves, both of sensation and motion: the heart, the origin of the arteries: the liver, the sanguifacient organ, and the origin of the veins which distribute nourishment to all parts of the body. These three are respectively the organs of the rational, the energetic, and the appetitive soul.[130]

[Footnote 130: Galen, Hipp. et Plat. Dogm. viii. pp. 656-657, Kühn. [Greek: e)x ô(=n e)perai/neto ê( tô=n phlebô=n a)rchê\ to\ ê(=par u(pa/rchein; ô(=| pa/lin ei(/peto, kai\ tê=s koinê=s pro\s ta\ phuta\ duna/meôs a)rchê\n ei)=nai tou=to to\ spla/gchnon, ê(/ntina du/namin o( Pla/tôn e)pithumêtikê\n o)noma/zei.] Compare vi. 519-572, vii. 600-601.

The same triplicity of [Greek: a)rchai\] in the organism had been recognised by Erasistratus, later than Aristotle, though long before Galen. [Greek: Kai\ E)rasi/stratos de\ ô(s a)rcha\s kai\ stoichei=a o(/lou sô/matos u(potithe/menos tê\n triploki/an tô=n a)ggei/ôn, neu=ra, kai\ phle/bas, kai\ a)rtêri/as] (Galen, T. iv. p. 375, ed. Basil). See Littré, Introduction aux Oeuvres d'Hippocrate, T. i. p. 203.

Plato does not say, as Galen declares him to say, that the appetitive soul has its primary seat or [Greek: a)rchê\] in the liver. It has its seat between the diaphragm and the navel; the liver is placed in this region as an outlying fort, occupied by the rational soul, and used for the purpose of controuling the rebellious tendencies of the appetitive soul. Chrysippus (ap. Galen, Hipp. et Plat. Dogm. iii. p. 288, Kühn) stated Plato's doctrine about the [Greek: trimerê\s psuchê\] more simply and faithfully than Galen himself. Compare his words ib. viii. p. 651, vi. p. 519. Galen represents Plato as saying that nourishment is furnished by the stomach first to the liver, to be there made into blood and sent round the body through the veins (pp. 576-578). This is Galen's own theory (De Usu Partium, iv. p. 268, Kühn), but it is not to be found in Plato. Whoever reads the Timæus, pp. 77-78, will see that Plato's theory of the conversion of food into blood, and its transmission as blood through the veins, is altogether different. It is here that he propounds his singular hypothesis--the interior network of air and fire, and the oscillating ebb and flow of these intense agencies in the cavity of the abdomen. The liver has nothing to do with the process.

So again Galen (p. 573) puts upon the words of Plato about the heart--[Greek: pêgê\n tou= peripherome/nou sphodrô=s ai(/matos]--an interpretation conformable to the Galenian theory, but noway consistent with the statements of the Timæus itself. And he treats the comparison of the cranium and the rotations of the brain within, to the rotations of the spherical Kosmos--which comparison weighed greatly in Plato's mind--as an illustrative simile without any philosophical value (Galen, H. et P. D. ii. 4, p. 230, Kühn; Plato, Tim. pp. 41 B, 90 A).]

The Galenian theory here propounded (which held its place in physiology until Harvey's great discovery of the circulation of the blood in the seventeenth century), though proved by fuller investigation to be altogether erroneous as to the liver--and partially erroneous as to the heart--is nevertheless made by its author to rest upon plausible reasons, as well as upon many anatomical facts, and results of experiments on the animal body, by tying or cutting nerves and arteries.[131] Its resemblance with the Platonic theory is altogether superficial: while the Galenian reasoning, so far from resembling the Platonic, stands in striking contrast with it. Anxious as Galen is to extol Plato, his manner of expounding and defending the Platonic thesis is such as to mark the scientific progress realised during the five centuries intervening between the two. Plato himself, in the Timæus, displays little interest or curiosity about the facts of physiology: the connecting principles, whereby he explains to himself the mechanism of the organs as known by ordinary experience, are altogether psychological, ethical, teleological. In the praise which Galen, with his very superior knowledge of the human organism, bestows upon the Timæus, he unconsciously substitutes a new doctrine of his own, differing materially from that of Plato.

[Footnote 131: Galen (Hipp. et Plat. Dogm. ii. p. 233, Kühn). [Greek: kai/toi ge ê(mei=s, a(/per e)paggello/metha lo/gô|, tau=ta e)pi\ tai=s tô=n zô=ôn a)natomai=s e)pidei/knumen], &c. P. 220: [Greek: Po/then ou)=n tou=to deichthê/setai? po/then a)/llothen ê)\ e)k tô=n a)natomô=n?]]

[Side-note: Physiology and pathology of Plato--compared with that of Aristotle and the Hippokratic treatises.]

I have no space here to touch on the interesting comparisons which might be made between the physiology and pathology of the Timæus--and that which we read in other authors of the same century--Aristotle and the Hippokratic treatises. More than one allusion is made in the Timæus to physicians: and Plato cites Hippokrates in other dialogues with respect.[132] The study and practice of medicine was at that time greatly affected by the current speculations respecting Nature as a whole: accomplished physicians combined both lines of study, implicating kosmical and biological theories:[133] and in the Platonic Timæus, the former might properly be comprised in the latter, since the entire Kosmos is regarded as one animated and rational being. Among the sixty treatises in the Hippokratic collection, composed by different authors, there are material differences--sometimes even positive opposition--both of doctrine and spirit. Some of them are the work of practitioners, familiar with the details of sickness and bodily injuries, as well as with the various modes of treatment: others again proceed from pure theorists, following out some speculative dogmas more or less plausible, but usually vague and indeterminate. It is to one of this last class of treatises that Galen chiefly refers, when he dwells upon the agreement between Plato and Hippokrates.[134] This is the point which the Platonic Timæus has in common with both Hippokrates and Aristotle. But on the other hand, Timæus appears entirely wanting in that element of observation, and special care about matters of fact, which these two last-mentioned authors very frequently display, even while confusing themselves by much vagueness of dogmatising theory. The Timæus evinces no special study of matters of fact: it contains ingenious and fanciful combinations, dictated chiefly from the ethical and theological point of view, but brought to bear upon such limited amount of knowledge as an accomplished man of Plato's day could hardly fail to acquire without special study. In the extreme importance which it assigns to diet, regimen, and bodily discipline, it agrees generally with Hippokrates: but for the most part, the points of contrast are more notable than those of agreement.

[Footnote 132: Plato, Phædrus, p. 270; Protagoras, p. 311.]

[Footnote 133: See a remarkable passage, Aristotel. De Sensu, 436, a. 21, [Greek: tô=n i)atrô=n oi( philosophôte/rôs tê\n te/chnên metio/ntes], &c.: also De Respiratione, ad finem, 480, b. 21, and [Greek: Peri\ tê=s kath' u(/pnon mantikê=s], i. p. 463, a. 5. [Greek: tô=n i)atrô=n oi( charie/ntes]. Compare Hippokrat. De Aere, Locis, &c., c. 2.

M. Littré observes:--

"La science antique, et par conséquent la médecine qui en formait une branche, était essentiellement synthétique. Platon, dans le Charmide, dit qu'on ne peut guérir la partie sans le tout. Le philosophe avait pris cette idée à l'enseignement médical qui se donnait de son temps: cet enseignement partait donc du tout, de l'ensemble; nous en avons la preuve dans le livre même du Pronostic, qui nous montre d'une manière frappante comment la composition des écrits particuliers se subordonne à la conception générale de la science; ce livre, tel qu'Hippocrate l'a composé, ne pouvait se faire qu'à une époque où la médecine conservait encore l'empreinte des doctrines encyclopédiques qui avaient constitué le fond de tout l'enseignement oriental." (Littré, OEuvres D'Hippocrate, T. ii. p. 96. Argument prefixed to the Prognostikon.)]

[Footnote 134: He alludes especially to the Hippokratic treatise [Greek: Peri\ Phu/sios a)nthrô/pou], see De Hipp. et Plat. Dogm. viii. pp. 674-710, ed. Kühn.

In the valuable Hippokratic composition--[Greek: Peri\ A)rchai/ês I)êtrikê=s]--(vol. i. pp. 570-636, ed. Littré) the author distinguished [Greek: i)êtroi/], properly so-called, from [Greek: sophistai/], who merely laid down general principles about medicine. He enters a protest against the employment, in reference to medicine, of those large and indefinite assumptions which characterised the works of Sophists or physical philosophers such as Empedokles (pp. 570-620, Littré). "Such compositions," he says, "belong less to the medical art than to the art of literary composition"--[Greek: e)gô\ de\ toute/ôn me\n o(/sa tini\ ei)/rêtai sophistê=| ê)\ i)êtrô=|, ê)\ ge/graptai peri\ phu/sios, ê(=sson nomi/zô tê=| i)êtrikê=| te/chnê| prosê/kein ê)\ tê=| graphikê=|] (p. 620). Such men cannot (he says) deal with a case of actual sickness: they ought to speak intelligible language--[Greek: gnôsta\ le/gein toi=si dêmo/tê|si] (p. 572). Again, in the Treatise De Aere, Locis, et Aquis, Hippokrates defends himself against the charge of entering upon topics which are [Greek: meteôrolo/ga] (vol. ii. p. 14, Littré).

The Platonic Timæus would have been considered by Hippokrates as the work of a [Greek: sophistê/s]. It was composed not for professional readers alone, but for the public--[Greek: e)pi/stasthai e)s o(/son ei)ko\s i)diô/tên]--(Hippokrat. [Greek: Peri\ Pathô=n], vol. vi. p. 208, Littré).

The Hippokratic treatises afford evidence of an established art, with traditions of tolerably long standing, a considerable medical literature, and even much oral debate on medical subjects--[Greek: e)nanti/on a)kroate/ôn] (Hipp. [Greek: Peri\ Nou/sôn], vol. vi. pp 140-142-150, Littré). [Greek: O(\s a)\n peri\ i)ê/sios e)the/lê| e)rôta=|n te o)rthô=s, kai\ e)rôtô=nti a)pokri/nesthai, kai\ a)ntile/gein o)rthô=s, e)nthume/esthai chrê\ ta/de] (p. 140) . . . [Greek: Tau=ta e)nthumêthe/nta diaphula/ssein dei= e)n toi=si lo/goisin; o(/, ti a)\n de/ tis tou/tôn a(marta/nê|, ê)\ le/gôn ê)\ e)rôtô=n ê)\ a)pokrino/menos, . . . tau/tê| phula/ssonta chrê\ e)piti/thesthai e)n tê=| a)ntilogi/ê|] (p. 142).

The method, which Sokrates and Plato applied to ethical topics was thus applied by others to medicine and medical dogmas. How the dogmas of the Platonic Timæus would have fared, if scrutinised with oral interrogations in this spirit, by men even far inferior to Sokrates himself in acuteness--I will not say.]

[Side-note: Contrast between the admiration of Plato for the constructors of the Kosmos, and the defective results which he describes.]

From the glowing terms in which Plato describes the architectonic skill and foresight of those Gods who put together the three souls and the body of man, we should anticipate that the fabric would be perfect, and efficacious for all intended purposes, in spite of interruptions or accidents. But Plato, when he passes from purposes to results, is constrained to draw a far darker picture. He tells us that the mechanism of the human body will work well, only so long as the juncture of the constituent triangles is fresh and tight: after that period of freshness has passed, it begins to fail.[135] But besides this, there exist a formidable catalogue of diseases, attacking both body and mind: the cause of which (Plato says) "is plain to every one": they proceed from excess, or deficiency, or displacement, of some one among the four constituent elements of the human body.[136] If we enquire why the wise Constructors put together their materials in so faulty a manner, the only reply to be made is, that the counteracting hand of Necessity was too strong for them. In the Hesiodic and other legends respecting anthropogony we find at least a happy commencement, and the deterioration gradually supervening after it. But Plato opens the scene at once with all the suffering reality of the iron age--

[Greek: Plei/ê me\n ga\r gai=a kakô=n, plei/ê de\ tha/lassa; Nou=soi d' a)nthrô/poisin e)ph' ê(me/rê| ê)\d' e)pi\ nukti\ Au)to/matoi phoitô=si]--[137]

[Footnote 135: Plat. Tim. pp. 81-89 B.]

[Footnote 136: Plat. Tim. p. 82. [Greek: dê=lo/n pou kai\ panti/].]

[Footnote 137: Compare what Plato says in Republic, ii. p. 379 C, about the prodigious preponderance of [Greek: kaka\] over [Greek: a)gatha\] in the life of man.]

[Side-note: Degeneration of the real tenants of Earth from their primitive type.]

When Plato tells us that most part of the tenants of earth, air, and water--all women, birds, quadrupeds, reptiles, and fishes--are the deteriorated representatives of primitive men, constructed at the beginning with the most provident skill, but debased by degeneracy in various directions--this doctrine (something analogous to the theory of Darwin with its steps inverted) indicates that the original scheme of the Demiurgus, though magnificent in its _ensemble_ with reference to the entire Kosmos, was certain from the beginning to fail in its details. For we are told that the introduction of birds, quadrupeds, &c., as among the constituents of the Auto-zôon, was an essential part of the original scheme.[138] The constructing Gods, while forming men upon a pure non-sexual type (such as that invoked by the austere Hippolytus) exempt from the temptations of the most violent appetite,[139] foresaw that such an angelic type could not maintain itself:--that they would be obliged to reconstruct the whole human organism upon the bi-sexual principle, introducing the comparatively lower type of woman:--and that they must make preparation for the still more degenerate varieties of birds and quadrupeds, into which the corrupt and stupid portion of mankind would sink.[140] Plato does indeed tell us, that the primitive non-sexual type had the option of maintaining itself; and that it perished by its own fault alone.[141] But since we find that not one representative of it has been able to hold his ground:--and since we also read in Plato, that no man is willingly corrupt, but that corruption and stupidity of mind are like fevers and other diseases, under which a man suffers against his own consent[142]:--we see that the option was surrounded with insurmountable difficulties: and that the steady and continued degradation, under which the human race has sunk from its original perfection into the lower endowments of the animal world, can be ascribed only to the impracticability of the original scheme: that is, in other words, to the obstacles interposed by implacable Necessity, frustrating the benevolent purposes of the Constructors.

[Footnote 138: Plat. Tim. p. 41 B-C.]

[Footnote 139: Eurip. Hippol. 615; Medea, 573; Milton, Paradise Lost, x. 888.

[Greek: chrê\n a)/r' a)/llothe/n pothen brotou\s pai=das teknou=sthai, thê=lu d' ou)k ei)=nai ge/nos; chou(/tôs a)\n ou)k ê)=n ou)de\n a)nthrô/pois kako/n.]]

[Footnote 140: Plat. Tim. p. 76 D. [Greek: ô(s ga/r pote e)x a)ndrô=n gunai=kes kai\ ta)/lla thêri/a genê/sointo, ê)pi/stanto oi( xunista/ntes ê(ma=s], &c. Compare pp. 90 E, 91.]

[Footnote 141: Plat. Tim. p. 42.]

[Footnote 142: Plat. Tim. pp. 86-87.]

[Side-note: Close of the Timæus. Plato turns away from the shameful results, and reverts to the glorification of the primitive types.]

However, all these details, attesting the low and poor actual condition of the tenants of earth, water, and air--and forming so marked a contrast to the magnificent description of the Kosmos as a whole, with the splendid type of men who were established at first alone in its central region--all these are hurried over by Plato, as unwelcome accompaniments which he cannot put out of sight. They have their analogies even in the kosmical agencies: there are destructive kosmical forces, earthquakes, deluges, conflagrations, &c., noticed as occurring periodically, and as causing the almost total extinction of different communities.[143] Though they must not be altogether omitted, he will nevertheless touch them as briefly as possible.[144] He turns aside from this, the shameful side of the Kosmos, to the sublime conception of it with which he had begun, and which he now builds up again in the following poetical doxology the concluding words of the Timæus:--

"Let us now declare that the discourse respecting the Universe is brought to its close. This Kosmos, having received its complement of animals, mortal and immortal, has become greatest, best, most beautiful and most perfect: a visible animal comprehending all things visible--a perceivable God the image of the cogitable God: this Uranus, one and only begotten."[145]

[Footnote 143: Plato, Timæus, pp. 22, 23. Legg. iii. 677. Politikus, pp. 272, 273.]

[Footnote 144: Plat. Tim. p. 90 E. [Greek: ta\ ga\r a)/lla zô=a ê(=| ge/gonen au)=, dia\ brache/ôn e)pimnêste/on, o(/, ti mê/ tis a)na/gkê mêku/nein; ou(/tô ga\r e)mmetro/tero/s tis a)\n au)tô=| do/xeie peri\ tou\s tou/tôn lo/gous ei)=nai.]]

[Footnote 145: Plat. Tim. p. 92 C. [Greek: Kai\ dê\ kai\ te/los peri\ tou= panto\s nu=n ê)/dê to\n lo/gon ê(mi=n phô=men e)/chein; thnêta\ ga\r kai\ a)tha/nata zô=a labô\n kai\ xumplêrôthei\s o(/de o( ko/smos, ou(/tô zô=on o(rato\n ta\ o(rata\ perie/chon, ei)kô\n tou= noêtou= theo\s ai)sthêto/s, me/gistos kai\ a)/ristos ka/llisto/s te kai\ teleô/tatos ge/gonen,--ei(=s ou)rano\s o(/de, monogenê\s ô)/n.]

Weh! Weh! Du hast sie zerstört, Die schöne Welt, Mit mächtiger Faust; Sie stürzt, sie zerfällt! Ein Halb-Gott hat sie zerschlagen! Wir tragen Die Trümmern ins Nichts hinüber, Und klagen Ueber die verlorne Schöne! Mächtiger Der Erdensöhne, Prächtiger Baue sie wieder, In deinem Busen baue sie auf!

(The response of the Geister-Chor, in Goethe's Faust, after the accumulated imprecations uttered by Faust in his despair.)]

KRITIAS.

[Side-note: Kritias: a fragment.]

The dialogue Kritias exists only as a fragment, breaking off abruptly in the middle of a sentence. The ancient Platonists found it in the same condition, and it probably was never finished. We know, however, the general scheme and purpose for which it was destined.

[Side-note: Prooemium to Timæus. Intended Tetralogy for the Republic. The Kritias was third piece in that Tetralogy.]

The prooemium to the Timæus introduces us to three persons[146]: Kritias and Hermokrates, along with Sokrates. It is to them (as we now learn) that Sokrates had on the preceding day recited the Republic: a fourth hearer having been present besides, whom Sokrates expects to see now, but does not see--and who is said to be absent from illness. In requital for the intellectual treat received from Sokrates, Timæus delivers the discourse which we have just passed in review: Kritias next enters upon his narrative or exposition, now lying before us as a fragment: and Hermokrates was intended to follow it up with a fourth discourse, upon some other topic not specified. It appears as if Plato, after having finished the Republic as a distinct dialogue, conceived subsequently the idea of making it the basis of a Tetralogy, to be composed as follows: 1. _Timæus_: describing the construction of the divine Kosmos, soul and body--with its tenants divine and human; "the diapason ending full in man"--but having its harmony spoiled by the degeneration of man, and the partial substitution of inferior animals. 2. _Republic_: Man in a constituted society, administered by a few skilful professional Rulers, subject to perfect ethical training, and fortified by the most tutelary habits. 3. _Kritias_: this perfect society, exhibited in energetic action, and under pressure of terrible enemies. 4. _Hermokrates_--subject unknown: perhaps the same society, exhibited under circumstances calculated to try their justice and temperance, rather than their courage. Of this intended tetralogy the first two members alone exist: the third was left unfinished: and the fourth was never commenced. But the Republic appears to me to have been originally a distinct composition. An afterthought of Plato induced him to rank it as second piece in a projected tetralogy.[147]

[Footnote 146: Plato, Tim. p. 17 A. [Greek: ei(=s, du/o, trei=s; o( de\ dê\ te/tartos ê(mi=n, ô)= phi/le Ti/maie, pou=, tô=n chthe\s me\n daitumo/nôn, ta\ nu=n d' e(stiato/rôn?]

These are the words with which the Platonic Sokrates opens this dialogue. Proklus, in his Commentary on the Timæus (i. pp. 5-10-14, ed. Schneider), notices a multiplicity of insignificant questions raised by the ancient Platonic critics upon this exordium. The earliest whom he notices is Praxiphanes, the friend of Theophrastus, who blamed Plato for the absurdity of making Sokrates count aloud one, two, three, &c. Porphyry replied to him at length.

We see here that the habit of commenting on the Platonic dialogues began in the generation immediately after Plato's death, that is, the generation of Demetrius Phalereus.

Whom does Plato intend for the fourth person, unnamed and absent? Upon this point the Platonic critics indulged in a variety of conjectures, suggesting several different persons as intended. Proklus (p. 14, Schn.) remarks upon these critics justly--[Greek: ô(s ou)/te a)/xia zêtê/seôs zêtou=ntas, ou)/t' a)sphale/s ti le/gontas.] But the comments which he proceeds to cite from his master Syrianus are not at all more instructive (pp. 15-16, Schn.).]

[Footnote 147: Socher (Ueber Platon's Schriften, pp. 370-371) declares the fragment of the Kritias now existing to be spurious and altogether unworthy of Plato. His opinion appears to me unfounded, and has not obtained assent; but his arguments are as good as those upon which other critics reject so many other dialogues. He thinks the Kritias an inferior production: therefore it cannot have been composed by Plato. Socher also thinks that the whole allusion, made by Plato in this dialogue to Solon, is a fiction by Plato himself. That the intended epic about Atlantis would have been Plato's own fiction, I do not doubt, but it appears to me that Solon's poems (as they then existed, though fragmentary) must have contained allusions to Egyptian priests with whom he had conversed in Egypt, and to their abundance of historical anecdote (Plutarch, Solon, c. 26-31). It is not improbable that Solon did leave an unfinished Egyptian poem.]

[Side-note: Subject of the Kritias. Solon and the Egyptian priests. Citizens of Platonic Republic are identified with ancient Athenians.]

The subject embraced by the Kritias is traced back to an unfinished epic poem of Solon, intended by that poet and lawgiver to celebrate a memorable exploit of Athenian antiquity, which he had heard from the Priests of the Goddess Neith or Athênê at Sais in Egypt. These priests (Plato tells us) treated the Greeks as children, compared with the venerable antiquity of their own ancestors; they despised the short backward reckoning of the heroic genealogies at Athens or Argos. There were in the temple of Athênê at Sais records of past time for 9000 years back: and among these records was one, of that date, commemorating a glorious exploit, of the Athenians as they then had been, unknown to Solon or any of his countrymen.[148] The Athens, of 9000 years anterior to Solon, had been great, powerful, courageous, admirably governed, and distinguished for every kind of virtue.[149] Athênê, the presiding Goddess both of Athens and of Sais, had bestowed upon the Athenians a salubrious climate, fertile soil, a healthy breed of citizens, and highly endowed intelligence. Under her auspices, they were excellent alike in war and in philosophy.[150] The separation of professions was fully realised among them, according to the principle laid down in the Republic as the only foundation for a good commonwealth. The military class, composed of both sexes, was quartered in barrack on the akropolis; which was at that time more spacious than it had since become--and which possessed then, in common with the whole surface of Attica, a rich soil covering that rocky bottom to which it had been reduced in the Platonic age, through successive deluges.[151] These soldiers, male and female, were maintained by contributions from the remaining community: they lived in perpetual drill, having neither separate property, nor separate families, nor gold nor silver: lastly, their procreation was strictly regulated, and their numbers kept from either increase or diminution.[152] The husbandmen and the artizans were alike excellent in their respective professions, to which they were exclusively confined:[153] Hephæstus being the partner of Athênê in joint tutelary presidency, and joint occupation of the central temple on the akropolis. Thus admirably administered, the Athenians were not only powerful at home, but also chiefs or leaders of all the cities comprised under the Hellenic name: chiefs by the voluntary choice and consent of the subordinates. But the old Attic race by whom these achievements had been performed, belonged to a former geological period: they had perished, nearly all, by violent catastrophe--leaving the actual Athenians as imperfect representatives.

[Footnote 148: Plato, Timæus, pp. 22-23. The great knowledge of past history (real or supposed) possessed by the Egyptian priests, and the length of their back chronology, alleged by themselves to depend upon records preserved from a period of 17,000 years, are well known from the interesting narrative of Herodotus (ii. 37-43-77-145)--[Greek: mnê/mên a)nthrô/pôn pa/ntôn e)paske/ontes] (the priests of Egypt) [Greek: ma/lista, logiô/tatoi/ ei)si makrô=| tô=n e)gô\ e)s dia/peiran a)phiko/mên] (ii. 77) . . . [Greek: kai\ tau=ta a)treke/ôs phasi\n e)pi/stasthai, ai)ei/ te logizo/menoi, kai\ ai)ei\ a)pographo/menoi ta\ e)/tea] (ii. 145). Herodotus (ii. 143) tells us that the Egyptian priests at Thebes held the same language to the historian Hekatæus, as Plato here says that they held to Solon, when he talked about Grecian antiquity in the persons of Phorôneus and Niobê. Hekatæus laid before them his own genealogy--a dignified list of sixteen ancestors, beginning from a God--upon which they out-bid him with a counter-genealogy ([Greek: a)ntegenealo/gêsan]) of 345 chief priests, who had succeeded each other from father to son. Plato appears to have contracted great reverence for this long duration of unchanged regulations in Egypt, and for the fixed, consecrated, customs, with minute subdivision of professional castes and employments: the hymns, psalmody, and music, having continued without alteration for 10,000 years (_literally_ 10,000--[Greek: ou)ch ô(s e)/pos ei)pei=n muriosto/n, a)ll' o)/ntôs], Plat. Legg. ii. p. 656 E).]

[Footnote 149: Plato, Timæus, p. 23 C-D.]

[Footnote 150: Plato, Tim. p. 24 D. [Greek: a(/te ou)=n philopo/lemo/s te kai\ philo/sophos ê( theo\s ou)=sa], &c. Also p. 23 C.]

[Footnote 151: Plato, Krit. pp. 110 C, 112 B-D.]

[Footnote 152: Plato, Krit. p. 112 D. [Greek: plê=thos de\ diaphula/ttontes o(/, ti ma/lista tau)to\n e(autô=n ei)=nai pro\s to\n a)ei\ chro/non a)ndrô=n kai\ gunaikô=n], &c.]

[Footnote 153: Plato, Krit. p. 111 E. [Greek: u(po\ geôrgô=n me\n a)lêthinô=n kai\ pratto/ntôn au)to\ tou=to, gê=n de\ a)ri/stên kai\ u(/dôr a)phthonô/taton e)cho/ntôn], &c. Also p. 110 C.]

[Side-note: Plato professes that what he is about to recount is matter of history, recorded by Egyptian priests.]

Such was the enviable condition of Athens and Attica, at a period 9400 years before the Christian era. The Platonic Kritias takes pains to assure us that the statement was true, both as to facts and as to dates: that he had heard it himself when a boy of ten years old, from his grandfather Kritias, then ninety years old, whose father Dropides had been the intimate friend of Solon: and that Solon had heard it from the priests at Sais, who offered to show him the contemporary record of all its details in their temple archives.[154] Kritias now proposes to repeat this narrative to Sokrates, as a fulfilment of the wish expressed by the latter to see the citizens of the Platonic Republic exhibited in full action and movement. For the Athenians of 9000 years before, having been organised on the principles of that Republic, may fairly be taken as representing its citizens. And it will be more satisfactory to Sokrates to hear a recital of real history than a series of imagined exploits.[155]

[Footnote 154: Plat. Tim. pp. 23 E, 24 A-D. [Greek: to\ d' a)kribe\s peri\ pa/ntôn e)phexê=s ei)sau=this kata\ scholê/n, au)ta\ ta\ gra/mmata labo/ntes die/ximen] (24 A).]

[Footnote 155: Plat. Tim. p. 26 D-E.]

[Side-note: Description of the vast island of Atlantis and its powerful kings.]

Accordingly, Kritias proceeds to describe, in some detail, the formidable invaders against whom these old Athenians had successfully contended: the inhabitants of the vast island Atlantis (larger than Libya and Asia united), which once occupied most of the space now filled by the great ocean westward of Gades and the pillars of Heraklês. This prodigious island was governed by ten kings of a common ancestry: descending respectively from ten sons (among whom Atlas was first-born and chief) of the God Poseidon by the indigenous Nymph Kleito.[156] We read an imposing description of its large population and abundant produce of every kind: grain for man, pasture for animals, elephants being abundant among them:[157] timber and metals of all varieties: besides which the central city, with its works for defence, and its artificial canals, bridges, and harbour, is depicted as a wonder to behold.[158] The temple of Poseidon was magnificent and of vast dimensions, though in barbaric style.[159] The harbour, surrounded by a dense and industrious population, was full of trading vessels arriving with merchandise from all quarters.[160]

[Footnote 156: Plat. Krit. pp. 113-114.]

[Footnote 157: Plat. Krit. p. 114 E.]

[Footnote 158: Plat. Krit. p. 115 D. [Greek: ei)s e)/kplêxin mege/thesi ka/llesi/ te e)/rgôn i)dei=n], &c.]

[Footnote 159: Plat. Krit. p. 116 D-E.]

[Footnote 160: Plat. Krit. p. 117 E.]

[Side-note: Corruption and wickedness of the Atlantid people.]

The Atlantid kings, besides this great power and prosperity at home, exercised dominion over all Libya as far as Egypt, and over all Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. The corrupting influence of such vast power was at first counteracted by their divine descent and the attributes attached to it: but the divine attributes became more and more adulterated at each successive generation, so that the breed was no longer qualified to contend against corruption. The kings came to be intoxicated with wealth, full of exorbitant ambition and rapacity, reckless of temperance or justice. The measure of their iniquity at length became full; and Zeus was constrained to take notice of it, for the purpose of inflicting the chastisement which the case required.[161] He summoned a meeting of the Gods, at his own Panoptikon in the centre of the Kosmos and there addressed them.

[Footnote 161: Plat. Krit. p. 121.]

[Side-note: Conjectures as to what the Platonic Kritias would have been--an ethical epic in prose.]

At this critical moment the fragment called Kritias breaks off. We do not know what was the plan which Plato (in the true spirit of the ancient epic) was about to put into the mouth of Zeus, for the information of the divine agora. We learn only that Plato intended to recount an invasion of Attica, by an army of Atlantids almost irresistible: and the glorious repulse thereof by Athens and her allies, with very inferior forces. The tale would have borne much resemblance to the Persian invasion of Greece, as recounted by Herodotus: but Plato, while employing the same religious agencies which that historian puts in the foreground, would probably have invested them with a more ethical character, and would have arranged the narrative so as to illustrate the triumph of philosophical Reason and disciplined Energy, over gigantic, impetuous, and reckless Strength. He would have described in detail the heroic valour and endurance of the trained Athenian Soldiers, women as well as men: and he would have embodied the superior Reason of the philosophical Chiefs not merely in prudent orders given to subordinates, but also in wise discourses[162] and deliberations such as we read in the Cyropædia of Xenophon. We should have had an edifying epic in prose, if Plato had completed his project. Unfortunately we know only two small fractions of it: first the introductory prologue (which I have already noticed)--lastly, the concluding catastrophe. The conclusion was, that both the victors and the vanquished disappeared altogether, and became extinct. Terrific earthquakes, and not less terrific deluges, shook and overspread the earth. The whole military caste of Attica were, in one day and night, swallowed up into the bowels of the earth (the same release as Zeus granted to the just Amphiaraus)[163] and no more heard of: while not only the population of Atlantis, but that entire island itself, was submerged beneath the ocean. The subsidence of this vast island has rendered navigation impossible; there is nothing in the Atlantic Ocean but shallow water and mud.[164]

[Footnote 162: Plat. Tim. p. 19 C-E. [Greek: kata/ te ta\s e)n toi=s e)/rgois pra/xeis kai\ kata\ ta\s e)n toi=s lo/gois diermêneu/seis] (19 C).]

[Footnote 163: Apollodorus, iii. 6, 6; Pausanias, ix. 8, 2.]

[Footnote 164: Plat. Tim. p. 25 C-D. [Greek: seismô=n e)xaisi/ôn kai\ kataklusmô=n genome/nôn, mia=s ê(me/ras kai\ nukto\s chalepê=s e)pelthou/sês . . . a)/poron kai\ a)diereu/nêton ge/gone to\ e)kei= pe/lagos], &c.

Respecting the shallow and muddy water of the Atlantic and its unnavigable character, as believed in the age of Plato, see a long note in my 'History of Greece' (ch. xviii. vol. iii. p. 381).]

[Side-note: Plato represents the epic Kritias as matter of recorded history.]

The epic of Plato would thus have concluded with an appalling catastrophe of physical agencies or divine prodigies (such as that which we read at the close of the Æschylean Prometheus[165]), under which both the contending parties perished. These gigantic outbursts of kosmical forces, along with the other facts, Plato affirms to have been recorded in the archives of the Egyptian priests. He wishes us to believe that the whole transaction is historical. As to particular narratives, the line between truth and fiction was obscurely drawn in his mind.

[Footnote 165: Æschyl. Prom. 1086.]

Another remark here deserving of notice is, That in this epic of the Kritias, Plato introduces the violent and destructive kosmical agencies (earthquakes, deluges, and the like) as frequently occurring, and as one cause of the periodical destruction of many races or communities. It is in this way that the Egyptian priest is made to explain to Solon the reason why no long-continued past records were preserved in Attica, or anywhere else, except in Egypt.[166] This last-mentioned country was exempt from such calamities: but in other countries, the thread of tradition was frequently broken, because the whole race (except a few) were periodically destroyed by deluges or conflagrations, leaving only a few survivors miserably poor, without arts or letters. The affirmation of these frequent destructions stands in marked contradiction with the chief thesis announced at the beginning of the Timæus--_viz._, the beauty and perfection of the Kosmos.

[Footnote 166: Plato, Tim. pp. 22 C-D, 23 B-C.]