The Timaeus of Plato

INTROD UCTION.
5 r
nor will he do our thinking for us : he loves best to make us
construct the edifice for ourselves from the materials with which
he supplies us. And this we can only do by careful combination
of his statements on the subject in hand, spread, it may be,
over several dialogues, and by sober interpretation of his figurative
language, availing ourselves at the same time of whatever light
we may be able to derive from ancient expositors of Plato, and
chiefly from Aristotle. Consequently no theory we may thus
form is a matter of mathematical demonstration : if we can find
one which combines Plato's various statements into a systematic
whole and reveals a distinct sequence of his thought, all reasonable
expectation
is satisfied. In evolving the opinions which
have in this essay been offered concerning the interpretation
of the Timaeus, I have made but two postulates that Plato does
not talk at random, and that he does not contradict himself.
To any who reject one or both of these postulates the arguments
adduced in the foregoing are of course not addressed, since there
is no common ground for arguing. But of those who accept them,
whoever has an interpretation to propound which more thoroughly
harmonises all the elements of Plato's thought than I have been
able to do, and which more readily and directly arises from his
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