The Timaeus of Plato

C] TIMAI02. 229
us ;
and whereas it was irregular and mobile, they render it
immovable owing to uniformity and contraction, and so it
becomes rigid. And what is
against nature contracted in
obedience to nature struggles and thrusts itself apart and to
;
this struggling and quaking has been given the name of
trembling and :
shivering and both the effect and the cause
of it are in all cases termed ' cold '.
'
Hard ' is the name given to all things
to which our flesh
yields and ' soft ' to those which
; yield to the flesh
;
and so also
they are termed in their relation to each other. Those which
yield are such as have a small base of support; and the figure
with square surfaces, as it is most firmly based, is the most
stubborn form ;
so too is whatever from the intensity of its compression
offers the strongest resistance.
Of 'heavy' and 'light' we shall find the clearest explanation
if we examine them together with the so-called 'below' and
'
above'.
That there are naturally two opposite regions, dividing
the universe between them, one the lower, to which sink all
things that have material bulk, the other upper, to which everything
rises against its will, is altogether a false opinion. For
force which is in nature. So when we of flame has a stronger upward tendency
raise any substance of an earthy nature, than a smaller as an objection to Plato's
the earthward impulse which we observe theory ; whereas it is precisely what
in it is not due to the fact that the earth Plato affirms must on his principles inis
the downward region whither all
heavy evitably be the case. Aristotle's own
bodies tend to fall, but to this sifting force doctrine differed but little from the vulgar
which causes the mass of earth to strive notion on the subject see :
physica IV v
towards its own sphere. 2 1 2 a 24 woV eVel TO p.lv KOV^OV TO ai>