And these are the powers and virtues of the soul of the universe. And when they once enter into the organs of corruptible bodies, being themselves incorruptible, there the form of the binary and boundless principle shows itself most briskly, while that of the unmixed and purer principle lies as it were dormant in obscurity. And thus it happens, that a man shall rarely observe any human passion or motion of the understanding, void of reason, where there shall not something appear either of desire or emulation, joy or grief. Several philosophers therefore will have the passions to be so many sorts of reasonings, seeing that desire, grief, and anger are all the effects of judgment. Others allege the virtues themselves to be derived from passions; fortitude depending on fear, temperance on voluptuousness, and justice on love of gain. Now the soul being both speculative and practical, contemplating as well generals as particulars, and seeming to comprehend the one by the assistance of the intellect and the other by the aid of sense, common reason, which encounters the Same in the Other and the Other in the Same, endeavors by certain limits and distinctions to separate one from many and the divisible from the indivisible; but she cannot accomplish her design nor be purely in one or the other, in regard the principles are so oddly interwoven and intermixed and confusedly huddled together. For this reason did God constitute a receptacle for the Same and the Other, out of the indivisible and divisible substance, to the end there might be order in variety. Now this was generation. For without this the Same could have no variety, and therefore no motion or generation; and the Other could have no order, and therefore no consistence or generation. For should we grant the Same to be different from the Other, and the Other to be the Same with itself, such a commixture would produce nothing generative, but would want a third something, like matter, to receive both and be disposed of by both. And this is that matter which God first composed, when he bounded the movable nature of bodies by the steadfastness of things intelligible. Now then, as voice, merely voice, is only an insignificant and brutish noise, but speech is the expression of the mind by significant utterance; as harmony consists of sounds and intervals,—a sound being always one and the same, and an interval being the difference and diversity of sounds, while both being mixed together produce air and melody;—thus the passive nature of the soul was without limits and unstable, but afterwards became determinate, when limits were set and a certain form was given to the divisible and manifold variety of motion. Thus having comprised the Same and the Other, by the similitudes and dissimilitudes of numbers which produce concord out of disagreement, it becomes the life of the world, sober and prudent, harmony itself, and reason overruling necessity mixed with persuasion. This necessity is by most men called fate or destiny, by Empedocles friendship and discord, by Heraclitus the opposite straining harmony of the world, as of a bow or harp, by Parmenides light and darkness, by Anaxagoras mind and infinity, by Zoroaster God and Daemon, naming one Oromasdes, the other Arimanius. Though as for Euripides, he makes use of the disjunctive erroneously for the copulative, where he says, Jove, whether he be Necessity, that Nature’s force controls, Or the intelligence of human souls. For, indeed, the powers which bear dominion over the universe are necessity and wisdom. This is that therefore which the Egyptians intimate in their fables, feigning that, when Horus was punished and dismembered, he bequeathed his spirit and blood to his father, but his flesh and his fat to his mother. There is no part of the soul which remains pure and unmixed, or separate from the rest; for, according to the opinion of Heraclitus, harmony latent is of greater value than that which is visible, as being that wherein the blending Deity concealed and sunk all varieties and dissimilitudes. Nevertheless, there appears in the irrational part a turbulent and boisterous temerity; in the rational part, an orderly and well-marshalled prudence; in the sensitive part, the constraint of necessity; but in the understanding, entire and perfect command of itself. The limiting and bounding power sympathizes with the whole and the indivisible, by reason of the nearness of their relations; on the other side, the dividing power fixes itself upon particulars, by virtue of the divisible substance; and the whole rejoices at the mutation of the Same by means of the Other, as occasion requires. In the like manner, the various inclinations of men to virtue and vice, to pleasure and toil, as also the enthusiasms and raptures of lovers, the combats of honor with lustful desires, plainly demonstrate the mixture of the divine and impassible with the moral and corporeal part; of which Plato himself calls the one concupiscence of pleasures, natural to ourselves; the other an opinion introduced from without, aspiring to the chiefest good. For passible qualities of the soul arise from herself; but she participates of understanding, as being infused from without, by the more worthy principle. Nor is the celestial nature privileged from this double society and communion. For sometimes it is seen to incline one way or the other, but it is set right again by the more powerful revolution of the Same, and governs the world. Nay, there shall come a time, as it has happened already, when the world’s moving wisdom shall grow dull and drowsy, drowned in oblivion of its own duty; while that which is familiar and agreeable to the body from the beginning draws and winds back the right-hand motion of the universe, causing the wheels to go slow and heavy. Yet shall it not be able to dash in pieces the whole movement, for that the better part, rousing and recollecting herself and observing the pattern and exemplar of God, shall with his aid reduce all things again into their former order. Thus it is demonstrable by many proofs, that the soul was not altogether the workmanship of the Deity, but that having in itself a certain portion of innate evil, it was by him digested and beautified who limited infinity by unity, to the end it might be a substance within the compass of certain limits; intermixing order and mutation, variety and resemblance, by the force of the Same and the Other; and lastly working into all these, as far as it was possible, a mutual community and friendship by the assistance of numbers and harmony. Concerning which things, although you have heard frequent discourses, and have likewise read several arguments and disputes committed to writing upon the same subjects, it will not be amiss for me also to give a short account, after a brief repetition of Plato’s own words. God, said he, in the first place withdrew one part from the whole; which done, he took away the double of that; then a third part, sesquialter in proportion to the second, and triple to the first; then a fourth part, double to the second; next a fifth part, being the triple of the third; then a sixth, eight times the first; and lastly a seventh, being twenty-seven times the first. This done, he filled up the duple and triple intervals, retrenching also from thence certain other particles, and placing them in the midst of those intervals; so that in every interval there might be two medieties, the one exceeding and being exceeded by one and the same part of the extremes, the other exceeding and being exceeded by the same number. Now in regard that from these connections in the first spaces there arose the intervals of sesquialters, sesquiterces, and sesquioctaves, he filled up all the sesquiterce intervals with sesquioctaves, leaving a part of each, so that the interval left of the part might bear the numerical proportion of 256 to 243. Timaeus , p. 35 B. Here the question will be first concerning the quantity, next concerning the order, and in the third place concerning the force and virtue of the numbers. As to the quantity, we are to consider which he takes in the double and triple intervals. As to the order, whether they are to be placed in one row, according to the direction of Theodorus, or (as Crantor will have them) in the form of a Λ , placing the unit at the top, and the duples and triples apart by themselves in two several files. Lastly, we are to examine of what use and virtue they are in the structure and composition of the soul. As to the first, we shall relinquish the opinion of those who affirm that it is enough, in proportions, to consider the nature of the intervals, and of the medieties which fill up their vacancies; and that the demonstration can be made out for any numbers whatsoever that have spaces sufficient to receive the aforesaid proportions. For this being granted, it makes the demonstration obscure, without the help of schemes, and drives us from another theory, which carries with it a delight not unbecoming philosophy. Beginning therefore from the unit, let us place the duples and triples apart; and there will be on the one side, 2, 4, 8; on the other 3, 9, 27; —seven numbers in all, proceeding forward by multiplication four steps from the unit, which is assumed as the common base. For not only here, but upon other occasions, the sympathy of the quaternary number with the septenary is apparent. There is this peculiar to that tetractys or quaternary number thirty six, so much celebrated by the Pythagoreans, which is more particularly worthy admiration,—that it is composed of the first four even numbers and the first four odd numbers; and it is the fourth connection made of numbers put together in order. The first connection is of one and two; the second of odd numbers. For placing the unit, which is common to both, before, he first takes eight and then twenty-seven, as it were pointing out with the finger where to place each particular sort. [These places are so depraved in the original, that the sense is lost.] But it belongs to others to explain these things more accurately and distinctly; while we content ourselves with only what remains, as peculiarly proper to the subject in hand.