The Timaeus of Plato

44 INTRODUCTION.
cosmic soul and the ideas. But perhaps
it
may serve to render
the matter clearer, if we put
it in some such way as this.
The ideas, we know, are self-existing, substantial realities. But
they can in no wise be essences external to the world- soul, else
would the world-soul cease to be All :
they must therefore be in-
of the universe
cluded in it or identical with it. Now the body
is the material image of the soul thereof: also all material things
are images of the ideas. Thus then, being TrapaSeiy/xara of the
same troves, the ideas and the cosmic soul coincide.
The ideas, I
say not an idea. For every single idea is the type of one class
of material images ;
the ideal tree is the type of material trees, and
of nothing else. The material trees then represent the cosmic
soul in so far as that can be expressed in terms of trees they
represent, so to speak, the ScvSpoV^s of it. Accordingly the idea
of tree is one determinate aspect of the cosmic soul that aspect
which finds its material expression in a particular tree. And so
the sum total of the ideas will be the sum total of the determinations
of the cosmic soul
the soul in all her aspects and significations.
Also the supreme idea, the avro dyaBdv,
will be the soul
herself as such, considered as not in any way specially determined :
the material copy of which is not anything in the universe, but
the material universe as a whole, which is fairer, Plato says, than
aught that is contained within it.
Thus by following up this line we arrive at a result which
precisely tallies with that which we reached when considering the
relation between the avro dya.9ov and the inferior ideas. And
so is the substantial existence of the ideas preserved intact, since
each idea is the universal soul in some special determination.
So too is the unity of the eternal essence maintained ;
for all the
ideas are the same verity viewed in different aspects. And here,
as everywhere in the mature Platonism, do the principles of Unity
and Multitude go hand in hand, mutually supporting one another
and never to be parted.
Qdrepov 45. We have seen that the universal soul is constituted
as space. o f Tav
'
Tov Odrepov and ovata, and the general significance of these
terms has been discussed. But there is one special application
of 6d.Tf.pov
which has not yet occupied our attention. This is
Plato's conception of x^P a or ) Space.
Plato's identification of the material principle in nature with
space than which there is no more masterly piece of analysis
in ancient philosophy has also been very copiously dealt with