| Plato, Timaeus (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Ti.]. | ||
| <<Pl. Ti. 32a | Pl. Ti. 35a (Greek) | >>Pl. Ti. 37b |
33dand to experience by its own agency and within itself all actions and passions, since He that had constructed it deemed that it would be better if it were self-sufficing rather than in need of other things. Hands, too, He thought He ought not to attach unto it uselessly, seeing they were not required either for grasping or for repelling anyone; nor yet feet, nor any instruments of locomotion whatsoever.
34aFor movement He assigned unto it that which is proper to its body, namely, that one of the seven motions note which specially belongs to reason and intelligence; wherefore He spun it round uniformly in the same spot and within itself and made it move revolving in a circle; and all the other six motions He took away and fashioned it free from their aberrations. And seeing that for this revolving motion it had no need of feet, He begat it legless and footless.
Such, then, was the sum of the reasoning of the ever-existing God concerning the god
34bwhich was one day to be existent, whereby He made it smooth and even and equal on all sides from the center, a whole and perfect body compounded of perfect bodies, And in the midst thereof He set Soul, which He stretched throughout the whole of it, and therewith He enveloped also the exterior of its body; and as a Circle revolving in a circle He established one sole and solitary Heaven, able of itself because of its excellence to company with itself and needing none other beside, sufficing unto itself as acquaintance and friend. And because of all this He generated it to be a blessed God.Now as regards the Soul, although we are essaying to describe it after the body,
34cGod did not likewise plan it to be younger than the body note; for, when uniting them, He would not have permitted the elder to be ruled by the younger; but as for us men, even as we ourselves partake largely of the accidental and casual, so also do our words. God, however, constructed Soul to be older than Body and prior in birth and excellence, since she was to be the mistress and ruler and it the ruled; and, He made her of the materials 35aand in the fashion which I shall now describe.Midway between the Being which is indivisible and remains always the same and the Being which is transient and divisible in bodies, He blended a third form of Being compounded out of the twain, that is to say, out of the Same and the Other; and in like manner He compounded it midway between that one of them which is indivisible and that one which is divisible in bodies. And He took the three of them, and blent them all together into one form, by forcing the Other into union with the Same, in spite of its being naturally difficult to mix.
35bAnd when with the aid of Being He had mixed them, and had made of them one out of three, straightway He began to distribute the whole thereof into so many portions as was meet; and each portion was a mixture of the Same, of the Other, and of Being. note And He began making the division thus: First He took one portion from the whole; then He took a portion double of this; then a third portion, half as much again as the second portion, that is, three times as much as the first; he fourth portion He took was twice as much as the second; the fifth three times as much as the third; 35cthe sixth eight times as much as the first; and the seventh twenty-seven times as much as the first. note 36aAfter that He went on to fill up the intervals in the series of the powers of 2 and the intervals in the series of powers of 3 in the following manner note: He cut off yet further portions from the original mixture, and set them in between the portions above rehearsed, so as to place two Means in each interval, —one a Mean which exceeded its Extremes and was by them exceeded by the same proportional part or fraction of each of the Extremes respectively note; the other a Mean which exceeded one Extreme by the same number or integer as it was exceeded by its other Extreme. And whereas the insertion of these links formed fresh intervals in the former intervals, that is to say, intervals of 3:2 and 4:3 and 9:8, He went on to fill up the 4:3 intervals with 9:8 intervals. 36bThis still left over in each case a fraction, which is represented by the terms of the numerical ratio 256:243. And thus the mixture, from which He had been cutting these portions off, was now all spent.Next, He split all this that He had put together into two parts lengthwise; and then He laid the twain one against the other, the middle of one to the middle of the other, like a great cross;
36cand bent either of them into a circle, and join them, each to itself and also to the other, at a point opposite to where they had first been laid together. And He compassed them about with the motion that revolves in the same spot continually, and He made the one circle outer and the other inner. And the outer motion He ordained to be the Motion of the Same, and the inner motion the Motion of the Other. And He made the Motion of the Same to be toward the right along the side, and the Motion of the Other to be toward the left along the diagonal note; and He gave the sovranty| Plato, Timaeus (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Pl. Ti.]. | ||
| <<Pl. Ti. 32a | Pl. Ti. 35a (Greek) | >>Pl. Ti. 37b |
