Timaeus — Plato
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
Plato (Tim. 62 C ff. ), he denied the above and below in space, and said that all things were the same in relation to a centre. He speaks also of the world as one and indestructible ; ' for neither from within nor from without does it admit of destruction ' (cp. Tim. 33).
He mentions ten heavenly bodies, including the sun and moon, the earth and the counter-earth {avrixQurv) , and in the midst of them all he places the central fire, around which they are moving — this is hidden from the earth by the counter-earth. Of neither is there any trace in Plato, who makes the earth the centre of his system. Philolaus magnifies the virtues of particular numbers, especially of the number 10 (Stob. Eclog. i.
2, 3), and descants upon odd and even numbers, after the manner of the later Pythagoreans. It is worthy of remark that these mystical fancies are nowhere to be found in the writings of Plato, although the importance of number as a form and also an instrument of thought is ever present to his mind.
Both Philolaus and Plato agree in making the world move in certain numerical ratios according to a musical scale : though Bockh is of opinion that the two scales, of Philolaus and of the Timaeus, do not correspond ....
We appear not to be sufficiently acquainted with the early Pythagoreans to know how far the statements contained in these fragments corresponded with their doctrines; and we therefore cannot pronounce, either in favour of the genuineness of the fragments, with Bockh and Zeller, or, with Valentine Rose and Schaarschmidt, against them.
But it is clear that they throw but little light upon the Timaeus, and that their resemblance to it has been exaggerated. That there is a degree of confusion and indistinctness in Plato's account both of man and of the universe has been already acknowledged.
We cannot tell (nor could Plato himself have told) where the figure or myth ends and the philosophical truth begins; we cannot explain (nor could Plato himself have explained to us) the relation of the ideas to appearance, of which one is the copy of the other, and yet of all things in the world they are the most opposed and unlike.
This opposition is presented to us in many forms, as the antithesis of the one and many, of the finite and infinite, of the intelligible and sensible, of the unchangeable and the changing, of the indivisible and the divisible, of the fixed stars and the planets, of the creative mind and the primeval chaos.
These pairs of opposites arc so many aspects of the great opposi- Timaeus. tion between ideas and phenomena — they easily pass into one Introducanother; and sometimes the two members of the relation differ ^'"'^" in kind, sometimes only in degree.
As in Aristotle's matter and form, the connexion between them is really inseparable ; for if we attempt to separate them they become devoid of content and therefore indistinguishable ; there is no difference between the idea of which nothing can be predicated, and the chaos or matter which has no perceptible qualities — between Being in the abstract and Nothing.
Yet we are frequently told that the one class of them is the reality and the other appearance ; and one is often spoken of as the double or reflection of the other. For Plato never clearly saw that both elements had an equal place in mind and in nature ; and hence, especially when we argue from isolated passages in his writings, or attempt to draw what appear to us to be the natural inferences from them, we are full of perplexity.
There is a similar confusion about necessity and free-will, and about the state of the soul after death. Also he sometimes supposes that God is imm.anent in the world, sometimes that he is transcendent. And having no distinction of objective and subjective, he passes imperceptibly from one to the other ; from intelligence to soul, from eternity to time.
These contradictions may be softened or concealed by a judicious use of language, but they cannot be wholly got rid of. That an age of intellectual transition must also be one of inconsistency ; that the creative is opposed to the critical or defining habit of mind or time, has been often repeated by us. But, as Plato would say, * there is no harm in repeating twice or thrice ' (Laws vi.
754 C) what is important for the understanding of a great author. It has not, however, been observed, that the confusion partly arises out of the elements of opposing philosophies which are preserved in him. He holds these in solution, he brings them into relation with one another, but he does not perfectly harmonize them. They are part of his own mind, and he is incapable of placing himself outside of them and criticizing them.
They grow as he grows; they are a kind of composition with which his own philosophy is overlaid. In early life he fancies that he has mastered them : but he is also mastered by them ; and in language (cp. Sophist, 243 B) which may be compared with the hesitating tone of the Timaeus, he confesses in his later years that they are full of obscurity to him. He attributes new meanings to the words of Parmenides and Heracleitus; but at times the old Eleatic philosophy appears to go beyond him ; then the world of phenomena disappears, but the doctrine of ideas is also reduced to nothingness.
All these philosophers are nearer to one another than they themselves supposed, and nearer to him than he supposed. All of them are antagonistic to sense and have an affinity to number and measure and a presentiment of ideas. Even in Plato they still retain their contentious or controversial character, which was developed by the growth of dialectic.
He is never able to reconcile the first causes of the pre-Socratic philosophers with the final causes of Socrates himself. . There is no intelligible account of the relation of numbers to the universal ideas, or of universals to the idea of good.
He found them all three, in the Pythagorean philosophy and in the teaching of Socrates and of the Megarians respectively; and, because they all furnished modes of explaining and arranging phenomena, he is unwilling to give up any of them, though he is unable to unite them in a consistent whole. Lastly, Plato, though an idealist philosopher, is Greek and not Oriental in spirit and feeling.
He is no mystic or ascetic ; he is not seeking in vain to get rid of matter or to find absorption in the divine nature, or in the Soul of the Universe. And therefore we are not surprised to find that his philosophy in the Timaeus returns at last to a worship of the heavens, and that to him, as to other Greeks, nature, though containing a remnant of evil, is still glorious and divine.
He takes away or drops the veil of mythology, and presents her to us in what appears to him to be the form — fairer and truer far — of mathematical figures. It is this element in the Timaeus, no less than its affinity to certain Pythagorean speculations, which gives it a character not wholly in accordance with the other dialogues of Plato. {b) The Timaeus contains an assertion perhaps more distinct than is found in any of the other dialogues (cp.
Rep. ii. 379 A ; Laws X. 901, 902) of the goodness of God. * He was good himself, and he fashioned the good everywhere. He was not 'a jealous God,' and therefore he desired that all other things should be equally good. He is the idea of good who has now become a
No commentary for this page under the selected tracks.
There is commentary on page 1.