Timaeus — Plato

Varieties of colour. 489 great body of sound is loud, and a small oody of sound the Timaeus. reverse. Respecting the harmonies of sound I must hereafter Timaeus. speak. There is a fourth class of sensible things, having many (4) Of the eye. intricate varieties, which must now be distinguished.

They flan°en^^tted are called by the general name of colours, and are a flame by objects. which emanates from every sort of body, and has particles corresponding to the sense of sight. 1 have spoken already, in what has preceded, of the causes which generate sight, and in this place it will be natural and suitable to give a rational theory of colours.

Of the particles coming from other bodies which fall upon simple the sight, some are smaller and some are larger, and some are '^°'o"''s are = equal to the parts of the sight itself. Those which are equal a Transare imperceptible, and we call them transparent.

The larger p^""^"'- produce contraction, the smaller dilation, in the sight, exercising a power akin to that of hot and cold bodies on the flesh, or of astringent bodies on the tongue, or of those heating bodies which we termed pungent. White and black are similar effects of contraction and dilation in another sphere, and for this reason have a different appearance.

Wherefore, we ought to term white that which dilates the b. white. visual ray, and the opposite of this black. There is also c. Black. a swifter motion of a different sort of fire which strikes and d.

Bright, dilates the ray of sight until it reaches the eyes, forcing a 68 way through their passages and melting them, and eliciting from them a union of fire and water which we call tears, being itself an opposite fire which comes to them from an opposite direction — the inner fire flashes forth like lightning, and the outer finds a way in and is extinguished in the moisture, and all sorts of colours are generated by the mixture.

This affection is termed dazzling, and the object which produces it is called bright and flashing. There is e. Red. another sort of fire which is intermediate, and which reaches and mingles with the moisture of the eye without flashing ; and in this, the fire mingling with the ray of the moisture, produces a colour like blood, to which we give the name of red.

A bright hue mingled with red and white gives the The com. colour called auburn {^avOdv). The law of proportion, how- ^°i""^areever, according to which the several colours are formed, a. Auburn.

p. 490

Componnd colours — how produced from simple.

Timaeus. TiMAEUS. b. Purple. c. Umber.

(i. Flamecolour. e. Dun. /. Pale yellow. g. Dark blue. h. Light blue. i. Leek green.

These are the necessary causes which God used in creating the universe. They are subservient to the divine, which we must seek, if we wish to attain bliss.

We must complete our account of creation.

even if a man knew he would be foolish in telling, for he could not give any necessary reason, nor indeed any tolerable or probable explanation of them. Again, red, when mingled with black and white, becomes purple, but it becomes umber [op(pvivov) when the colours are burnt as well as mingled and the black is more thoroughly mixed with them.

Flamecolour [TTvppbv) is produced by a union of auburn and dun {(l)aibv), and dun by an admixture of black and white ; pale yellow {(hxpbv), by an admixture of white and auburn. White and bright meeting, and falling upon a full black, become dark blue {fcvavovv), and when dark blue mingles with white, a light blue (yXavKov) colour is formed, as flame-colour with black makes leek green {npdoLov).

There will be no difficulty in seeing how and by what mixtures the colours derived from these are made according to the rules of probability. He, however, who should attempt to verify all this by experiment, would forget the difference of the human and divine nature. For God only has the knowledge and also the power which are able to combine many things into one and again resolve the one into many.

But no man either is or ever will be able to accomplish either the one or the other operation. These are the elements, thus of necessity then subsisting, which the creator of the fairest and best of created things associated with himself, when he made the self-sufficing and most perfect God, using the necessary causes as his ministers in the accompHshment of his work, but himself contriving the good in all his creations.

Wherefore we may distinguish two sorts of causes, the one divine and the other necessary, and may seek for the divine in all things, as far as our nature admits, with a view to the blessed life ; but the necessary 69 kind only for the sake of the divine, considering that without them and when isolated from them, these higher things for Avhich we look cannot be apprehended or received or in any way shared by us.

Seeing, then, that we have now prepared for our use the various classes of causes which are the material out of which the remainder of our discourse must be woven, just as wood is the material of the carpenter, let us revert in a few words to the point at which we began, and then endeavour to add on a suitable ending to the beginning of our tale.