The Timaeus of Plato

TIMAIO2. 185
affording place for all things that come into being, itself apprehensible
without sensation by a sort of bastard reasoning, hardly
matter of belief. It is with this in view that dreaming we say
that all which exists must be in some place and rilling some
space, and that what is neither on earth nor in heaven anywhere
is nought. All these and many kindred fancies have we even
concerning that unsleeping essence and truly existing, for that
by reason of this dreaming state we become impotent to arouse
ourselves and affirm the truth ; namely, that to an image it
belongs, seeing that it is not the very model of itself, on which
itself has been created, but is ever the fleeting semblance of
another, in
another to come into being, clinging to existence as
best it
may, on pain of being nothing at all ;
but to the really
existent essence reason in all exactness true comes as an ally,
declaring that so long as one thing is one and another thing
is other, neither of them shall come to be in the other, so that
the same becomes at once one and two.
in which sensible things are perceived, it
is not itself an object of sensation : it is
an ambiguous and doubtful form, hard to
grasp and hard to trust.
irpds S 8if] It is this that causes
our vague and dreamy state of mind regarding
existence. Because everything
of which our senses affirm the existence
exists in space, we rashly assume that
all things which exist exist in space, and
that what is not somewhere is nothing.
For we are held fast in the thraldom of
our own subjective perceptions, and suppose,
as dreamers do, that the visions
within our own consciousness are external
realities. It must be remembered
that Plato was the very first who had any
real conception of immaterial existence.
6. TTJV avirvov] i.e. the region of
objective truth, which we apprehend
with our waking faculties, that is to say,
by pure reason unhampered by sensation.
We do not conceive of the ideal
world as it really is, independent of all
conditions of time and space.
8. hrtiirtp ovS' avri TOVTO] I believe
the true construction of these words
has escaped all the editors and translators,
who are consequently in sore straits
what to make of tavrris. The construction
seems to me to be a very simple and
very Platonic