The Timaeus of Plato

52 A] TIMAI02. 183
suasion, the other yields to persuasion true ; opinion we must
admit is shared by all men, but reason by the gods alone and a
very small portion of mankind. This being so, we must agree
that there is first the unchanging idea, unbegotten and imperishable,
neither receiving aught into
itself from without nor itself
entering into aught else, invisible, nor in any wise perceptible
even that whereof the contemplation belongs to thought. Second
is that which is named after it and is like to it, sensible, created,
ever in motion, coming to be in a certain place and again from
thence perishing, apprehensible by opinion with sensation. And
the third kind is
space everlasting, admitting not destruction, but
limit, there is as existing in infinite intelligence. The
nothing to be contrasted
our universal vacancy there is nothing to account of the /teTaXrprriKii' in the 7'i-
phenomena are material symbols of ideal with it to give it a differentia, it is vacancy
truths: and it is only by these symbols
undefined : that is to say, it is just
that a finite intelligence, so far as it acts nothing at all. Thus we see that space
through the senses, can apprehend such pure and simple is an abstract logical
truths.
conception ; extension without the extended
Plato's identification of iheviroSoxy with
Xwpa arises from the absolute &Tra0eia of is nothing, for space can no more ex-
ist independently of the things in it than
the former. The manner of approaching time can exist without events to measure
it
may perhaps be most readily seen in the it. Thus in its most abstract significance
following way. Let us take any material X^P a is the eternal law or necessity constraining
object, say a ball of bronze. Now every
pluralised fox^ to have its per-
one of the qualities belonging to the ceptions under the form we call space :
bronze we know to be due to the nlfnjua. since then foxy does, and therefore must,
which informs the viroSox'f;' therefore to evolve itself under this form and not another,
reach the uTroSox^j we must abstract, one
after another, all the attributes which belong
x^P a ultimately represents the law
that fox^l shall pluralise itself.
to the bronze. When these are Between Plato's x^Pa and Aristotle's
stripped away, what have we remaining? v\rj the only difference physically seems
simply a spherical space of absolute vacancy.
to me to lie in the superior distinctness
The viroSoxT] then, as regards the and definiteness of Plato's conception : it
bronze ball, is that sphere of empty space.
was the intense vividness of Plato's insight
But still this void sphere is
something;
that led him to the identification
because it is defined by the limits of the of the substrate with space. Aristotle,
air surrounding it : it is in fact a sphere of whose V\TI is taken bodily from Plato,
emptiness. But now suppose, instead of ought to have made the same identification:
abstracting the qualities from the bronze
that he did not do so is due to
alone, we abstract them from the whole the mistiness which pervades his whole
universe and all its contents: then we thought as compared with Plato's.
have vacancy coextensive with the universe.
A few words are demanded by Aris-
But mark the difference. The totle's reference to the Platonic theory
empty sphere we could speak of as something,
in physica IV b n. ii 29
Aristotle there
because it was the interval between affirms that Plato identifies the /tera-
in the limits of the surrounding air. But XtjvTiKiiv with x^pa, but that he gives one