Timaeus (42-46)

Tim.

And when, by virtue of Necessity, they should be implanted in bodies, and their bodies are subject to influx and efflux, these results would necessarily follow,—firstly, sensation that is innate and common to all proceeding from violent affections; secondly, desire mingled with pleasure and pain; and besides these, fear and anger

and all such emotions as are naturally allied thereto, and all such as are of a different and opposite character. And if they shall master these they will live justly, but if they are mastered, unjustly. And he that has lived his appointed time well shall return again to his abode in his native star, and shall gain a life that is blessed and congenial but whoso has failed therein shall be changed into woman’s nature at the second birth;[*] and if, in that shape, he still refraineth not from wickedness he shall be changed every time, according to the nature of his wickedness, into some bestial form after the similitude of his own nature; nor in his changings shall he cease from woes until he yields himself to the revolution of the Same and Similar that is within him, and dominating by force of reason that burdensome mass which afterwards adhered to him of fire and water and earth and air, a mass tumultuous and irrational, returns again to the semblance of his first and best state. When He had fully declared unto them all these ordinances, to the end that He might be blameless in respect of the future wickedness of any one of them, He proceeded to sow them, some in the Earth, some in the Moon, others in the rest of the organs of Time. Following upon this sowing, He delivered over to the young gods the task of molding mortal bodies, and of framing and controlling all the rest of the human soul which it was still necessary to add, together with all that belonged thereto, and of governing this mortal creature in the fairest and best way possible, to the utmost of their power, except in so far as it might itself become the cause of its own evils. So He, then, having given all these commands, was abiding in His own proper and wonted state.

Tim.

And as He thus abode, His children gave heed to their Father’s command and obeyed it. They took the immortal principle of the mortal living creature, and imitating their own Maker, they borrowed from the Cosmos portions of fire and earth and water and air,

as if meaning to pay them back, and the portions so taken they cemented together; but it was not with those indissoluble bonds wherewith they themselves were joined that they fastened together the portions but with numerous pegs, invisible for smallness; and thus they constructed out of them all each several body, and within bodies subject to inflow and outflow they bound the revolutions of the immortal Soul. The souls, then, being thus bound within a mighty river neither mastered it nor were mastered, but with violence they rolled along and were rolled along themselves, so that the whole of the living creature was moved, but in such a random way that its progress was disorderly and irrational, since it partook of all the six motions[*]: for it progressed forwards and backwards, and again to right and to left, and upwards and downwards, wandering every way in all the six directions. For while the flood which foamed in and streamed out, as it supplied the food, was immense, still greater was the tumult produced within each creature as a result of the colliding bodies, when the body of a creature happened to meet and collide with alien fire from without, or with a solid lump of earth or liquid glidings of waters, or when it was overtaken by a tempest of winds driven by air, and when the motions due to all these causes rushing through the body impinged upon the Soul. And for these reasons all such motions were then termed Sensations,[*] and are still so termed today. Moreover, since at that time they were causing, for the moment, constant and widespread motion, joining with the perpetually flowing stream in moving and violently shaking the revolutions of the Soul, they totally blocked the course of the Same by flowing contrary thereto, and hindered it thereby in its ruling and its going; while, on the other hand, they so shook up the course of the Other that in the three several intervals of the double and the triple,[*] and in the mean terms and binding links of the 3/2, 4/3 and 9/8,—these being not wholly dissoluble save by Him who had bound them together,—they produced all manner of twistings, and caused in their circles fractures and disruptions of every possible kind, with the result that, as they barely held together one with another, they moved indeed but moved irrationally, being at one time reversed, at another oblique, and again upside down. Suppose, for example, that a man is in an upside down position, with his head resting on the earth and his feet touching something above, then, in this position of the man relative to that of the onlookers, his right will appear left to them, and his left right, and so will theirs to him.

Tim.

This, and such like, are just what the revolutions of the Soul experience with intensity;

and every time they happen upon any external object, whether it be of the class of the Same or of the Other,[*] they proclaim it to be the same as something or other than something contrary to the truth, and thereby prove themselves false and foolish, and devoid, at such times, of any revolution that rules and guides. And whenever external sensations in their movement collide with these revolutions and sweep along with them also the whole vessel of the Soul, then the revolutions, though actually mastered, appear to have the mastery. Hence it comes about that, because of all these affections, now as in the beginning, so often as the Soul is bound within a mortal body it becomes at the first irrational.[*] But as soon as the stream of increase and nutriment enters in less volume, and the revolutions calm down and pursue their own path, becoming more stable as time proceeds, then at length, as the several circles move each according to its natural track, their revolutions are straightened out and they announce the Same and the Other aright, and thereby they render their possessor intelligent. And if so be that this state of his soul be reinforced by right educational training, the man becomes wholly sound and faultless, having escaped the worst of maladies;[*] but if he has been wholly negligent therein, after passing a lame existence in life he returns again unperfected and unreasoning to Hades. These results, however, come about at a later time.[*] Regarding the subjects now before us, we must give a more exact exposition; and also regarding the subjects anterior to these, namely, the generation of bodies in their several parts, and the causes and divine counsels whereby the Soul has come into existence, we must hold fast to the most probable[*] account, and proceed accordingly, in the exposition now to be given. The divine revolutions, which are two, they bound within a sphere-shaped body, in imitation of the spherical form[*] of the All, which body we now call the head, it being the most divine part and reigning over all the parts within us. To it the gods delivered over the whole of the body they had assembled to be its servant, having formed the notion that it should partake in all the motions which were to be. In order, then, that it should not go rolling upon the earth, which has all manner of heights and hollows, and be at a loss how to climb over the one and climb out of the other, they bestowed upon it the body as a vehicle and means of transport.

Tim.

And for this reason the body acquired length, and, by God’s contriving, shot forth four limbs, extensible and flexible,

to serve as instruments of transport, so that grasping with these and’ supported thereon it was enabled to travel through all places, bearing aloft the chamber of our most divine and holy part. In this wise and for these reasons were legs and hands attached to all men; and inasmuch as they demand the forepart superior to the hinder part in honor and dignity, the Gods gave us the most part of our going in this direction. Thus it was necessary that man should have the forepart of his body distinct and dissimilar. Wherefore, dealing first with the vessel of the head, they set the face in the front thereof and bound within it organs for all the forethought of the Soul; and they ordained that this, which is the natural front, should be the leading part. And of the organs they constructed first light-bearing eyes, and these they fixed in the face for the reason following. They contrived that all such fire as had the property not of burning but of giving a mild light should form a body akin to the light of every day.[*] For they caused the pure fire within us, which is akin to that of day, to flow through the eyes in a smooth and dense stream; and they compressed the whole substance, and especially the center, of the eyes, so that they occluded all other fire that was coarser and allowed only this pure kind of fire to filter through. So whenever the stream of vision is surrounded by midday light, it flows out like unto like,[*] and coalescing therewith it forms one kindred substance along the path of the eyes’ vision, wheresoever the fire which streams from within collides with an obstructing object without. And this substance, having all become similar in its properties because of its similar nature, distributes the motions of every object it touches, or whereby it is touched, throughout all the body even unto the Soul, and brings about that sensation which we now term seeing. But when the kindred fire vanishes into night, the inner fire is cut off; for when it issues forth into what is dissimilar it becomes altered in itself and is quenched, seeing that it is no longer of like nature with the adjoining air, since that air is devoid of fire. Wherefore it leaves off seeing, and becomes also an inducement to sleep. For the eyelids —whose structure the Gods devised as a safeguard for the vision,—when they are shut close, curb the power of the inner fire; which power dissipates and allays the inward motions, and upon their allaying quiet ensues; and when this quiet has become intense there falls upon us a sleep that is well-nigh dreamless;

Tim.

but when some greater motions are still left behind, according to their nature and the positions they occupy

such and so great are the images they produce, which images are copied within and are remembered by the sleepers when they awake out of the dream. And it is no longer difficult to perceive the truth about the formation of images in mirrors and in bright and smooth surfaces of every kind. It is from the combination with each other of the inner and the outer fires, every time that they unite on the smooth surface and are variously deflected, that all such reflections necessarily result, owing to the fire of the reflected face coalescing with the fire of the vision on the smooth and bright surface.[*] And left appears as right, because contact takes place between opposite portions of the visual stream and opposite portions of the object, contrary to the regular mode of collision. Contrariwise, right appears as right and left as left whenever the fire changes sides on coalescing with the object wherewith it coalesces; and this occurs whenever the smooth surface of the mirrors, being elevated on this side and on that,[*] repels the right portion of the visual stream to the left and the left to the right. And when this same mirror is turned lengthwise to the face it makes the whole face appear upside down, since it repels the bottom of the ray to the top, and conversely the top to the bottom. Now all these are among the auxiliary Causes[*] which God employs as his ministers in perfecting, so far as possible, the Form of the Most Good; but by the most of men[*] they are supposed to be not auxiliary but primary causes of all things—cooling and heating, solidifying and dissolving, and producing all such effects. Yet they are incapable of possessing reason and thought for any purpose. For, as we must affirm, the one and only existing thing which has the property of acquiring thought is Soul; and Soul is invisible, whereas fire and water and earth and air are all visible bodies; and the lover of thought and knowledge must needs pursue first the causes which belong to the Intelligent Nature, and put second all such as are of the class of things which are moved by others, and themselves, in turn, move others because they cannot help it. And we also must act likewise. We must declare both kinds of Causes, but keep distinct those which, with the aid of thought, are artificers of things fair and good, and all those which are devoid of intelligence and produce always accidental and irregular effects.