The Timaeus of Plato

43 A] TIMAI02. 147
each of them, God sowed some in the earth, some in the moon,
and some in the other instruments of time. And what came
after the sowing he gave into the hands of the young gods, to
mould mortal bodies, and having wrought
all the residue of
human soul that needed yet to be added, to govern and guide
as nobly and perfectly as they could the mortal creature, in so
far as it
brought not evil upon its own head.
XV. So when he had made all these ordinances for them
God was abiding after the manner of his own nature : and as he
so abode, the children thinking on the command of their father
were obedient to it, and having received the immortal principle
of a mortal creature, imitating their own artificer, they borrowed
from the universe portions of fire and of earth and of
water and of air, on condition that they should be returned
again, and they cemented together what they took, not with the
indissoluble bonds wherewithal they themselves were held together,
but welding it with many rivets, invisible for smallness,
and making of all the elements one body for each creature, they
confined the revolutions of the immortal soul in a body in-
infants and young children.
abeyance of
while that of the Other is distorted or
account for the reason in notion of inferior durability.
reversed : its harmonic proportions cannot 8.
'4\i.vtv (V TW lavroiJ] This phrase
indeed be destroyed, save by the creator is significant. Plato does not say that
alone, but they are in every way strained the dt)/j.iovpyds returned to his own rjOos,
and perturbed. Accordingly, when she but that he 'was abiding' therein. The
has to judge concerning anything, that it
imperfect expresses that not only after
is same or other, her judgment is wrong, he had given these instructions, but
and she is filled with falsehood and folly
:
previously also, he was abiding. The
and reason, which seems to rule, is really eternal essence, while manifesting itself
enslaved by sensation. For all these in multiplicity, still abides in unity. The
causes the soul, at her first entrance into process of thought-evolution does not
a body, is devoid of reason. But presently, affect the nature of thought as it is in
as the disturbance caused by the requirements
itself: thought, while many and manifold,
of nutrition and growth diminishes, is one and simple
itself: still.
the circles of the Same and the Other 13. s diro8o0T|