The Timaeus of Plato

1 2 INTROD UCTION.
himself contributed to metaphysics, the conception of a
causative mind. And so his philosophy
the crudest type.
ends in a dualism of
Results. ii. And now we have lying before us the materials out of
which, with the aid of a hint or two gained from Sokrates, Plato
was to construct an idealistic philosophy. These materials consist
of the three principles enunciated by the three great teachers whose
1
views we have been considering
. These principles we may term
by different names according to the mode of viewing them
Motion, Rest, Life; Multiplicity, Unity, Thought; Becoming,
Being, Soul: all these triads amount to the same. But however
pregnant with truth these conceptions may prove to be, they
are thus far impotent and sterile to the utmost. Each is presented
to us in helpless isolation, incapable by itself of affording an
explanation of things or a basis of knowledge. To bring them to
light was only for men of genius, rightly to conciliate and
coordinate them required the supreme genius of all. Like the bow
of Odysseus, they await the hand of the master who alone can wield
them. The One of Parmenides and the Many pf Herakleitos
must be united in the Mind of Anaxagoras : that is to say, unity
and plurality must be shown as two necessary and inseparable
modes of soul's existence, before a philosophy can arise that
is indeed worthy of the name. And it is very necessary to
realise that to all appearance nothing could be more hopeless than
the deadlock at which philosophical speculation had arrived:
every way seemed to have been tried, and not one led to know-
1
It may be thought strange that I between the Pythagorean theory of
here make no mention of the Pytha- numbers and the Platonic theory of
goreans. But the Pythagorean
in- ideas a resemblance sufficient to influence
on Platonism has been grossly duce Aristotle to draw a comparison
overrated. Far too much importance between them in the first book of the
has often been attached to the state- metaphysics. But that the similarity
ments of late and untrustworthy au- was merely external is plain from
thorities, or to fragments attributed Aristotle's own account, and also that
on most unsubstantial grounds to the significance to be attached to the
Pythagorean writers. All that we Pythagorean numbers had been left
can safely believe about Pythagorean in an obscurity which probably could
philosophising is to be found, apart not have been cleared up by the
from what Plato tells us, in Aristotle : authors of the theory. We may doubtand
from his statements we may less accept the verdict of Aristotle in
had no a somewhat wider sense than he
pretty fairly infer that they real metaphysical system at all. There meant by the words \lav dirXwi
is indeed some superficial resemblance