2. Philosophy of Nature

With Plato Philosophy likewise commenced to devote more attention to the understanding of what is further determined, and in this way the matter of knowledge began to fall into divisions. In the Timæus the Idea thus makes its appearance as expressed in its concrete determinateness, and the Platonic Philosophy of Nature hence teaches us to have a better knowledge of the reality of the world; we cannot, however, enter into details, and if we did, they have little interest. It is more especially where Plato treats of physiology that his statements in no way correspond with what we now know, although we cannot fail to wonder at the brilliant glimpses of the truth there found, which have been only too much misconceived by the moderns. Plato derived a great deal from the Pythagoreans; how much is theirs, however, cannot be satisfactorily determined. We remarked before (p. 14) that the Timæus is really the fuller version of a Pythagorean treatise; other would-be wise persons have indeed said that the treatise is only an abstract made by a Pythagorean of the larger work of Plato, but the first theory is the more probable. The Timæus has in all times been esteemed the most difficult and obscure of the Platonic dialogues. This difficulty is due in part to the apparent mingling of conceiving knowledge and ordinary perception already mentioned (p. 20), just as we shall presently find an intermingling of Pythagorean numbers; and it is due still more to the philosophic nature of the matter in hand, of which Plato was as yet unconscious. The second difficulty lies in the arrangement of the whole, for what at once strikes one is that Plato repeatedly breaks off the thread of his argument, often appearing to turn back and begin again from the beginning. This moved critics such as August Wolff and others, who could not understand it philosophically, to take the Timæus to be an accumulation of fragments put together, or else to be several works which had only been loosely strung together into one, or into the Platonic portion of which much that is foreign had been introduced. Wolff accordingly thought it was evident from this that the dialogue, like Homer’s poems, had been, in its first form, spoken and not written. But although the connection seems unmethodical, and Plato himself makes what maybe called copious excuses for the confusion, we shall find how the whole matter really falls into natural divisions, and we shall also find the deep inward reason which makes necessary the frequent return to what apparently is the beginning.

An exposition of the reality of nature or of the becoming of the world is introduced by Plato in the following way: “God is the Good,” this stands also at the head of the Platonic Ideas in the verbally delivered discourses (supra, p. 11); “goodness, however, has no jealousy of anything, and being free from jealousy, God desired to make all things like Himself.” God here is still without determination, and a name which has no meaning for thought; nevertheless, where Plato in the Timæus again begins from the beginning, he is found to have a more definite idea of God. That God is devoid of envy undoubtedly is a great, beautiful, true, and childlike thought. With the ancients, on the contrary, we find in Nemesis, Dike, Fate, Jealousy, the one determination of the gods: moved by this they cast down the great and bring it low, and suffer not what is excellent and elevated to exist. The later high-minded philosophers controverted this doctrine. For in the mere idea of the Nemesis no moral determination is as yet implied, because punishment there is only the humiliation of what oversteps limits, but these limits are not yet presented as moral, and punishment is thus not yet a recognition of the moral as distinguished from the immoral. Plato’s thought is thus much higher than that of most of our moderns, who, in saying that God is a hidden God who has not revealed Himself to us and of whom we can know nothing, ascribe jealousy to God. For why should He not reveal Himself to us if we earnestly seek the knowledge of Him? A light loses nothing by another’s being kindled therefrom, and hence there was in Athens a punishment imposed on those who did not permit this to be done. If the knowledge of God were kept from us in order that we should know only the finite and not attain to the infinite, God would be a jealous God, or God would then become an empty name. Such talk means no more than that we wish to neglect what is higher and divine, and seek after our own petty interests and opinions. This humility is sin—the sin against the Holy Ghost.

Plato continues: “God found the visible” (παραλαβών)—a mythical expression proceeding from the necessity of beginning with an immediate, which, however, as it presents itself, cannot in any way be allowed—“not at rest, but moving in an irregular and disorderly manner; and out of disorder he brought order, considering that this was far better than the other.” From this it appears as if Plato had considered that God was only the δημιοῦργος, i.e. the disposer of matter, and that this, being eternal and independent, was found by Him as chaos; but in view of what has been said, this is false. These are not the philosophic doctrines which Plato seriously held, for he speaks here only after the manner of the ordinary conception, and such expressions have hence no philosophic content. It is only the introduction of the subject, bringing us, as it does, to determinations such as matter. Plato then comes in course of his progress to further determinations, and in these we first have the Notion; we must hold to what is speculative in Plato, and not to the first-mentioned ordinary conception. Likewise, when he says that God esteemed order to be the best, the mode of expression is naïve. Nowadays we should ask that God should first be proved; and just as little should we allow the visible to be established without much further ado. What is proved by Plato from this more naïve method of expression is, in the first place, the true determination of the Idea, which only appears later on. It is further said: “God reflecting that of what is visible, the unintelligent (ἀνόητον) could not be fairer than the intelligent (νοῦς), and that intelligence could not exist in anything devoid of soul, for these reasons put intelligence in the soul, and the soul in the body, and so united them that the world became a living and intelligent system, an animal.” We have reality and intelligence, and the soul as the bond connecting the two extremes, without which intelligence could not have part in the visible body; we saw the true reality comprehended by Plato in a similar way in the Phædrus (supra, p. 39). “There is, however, only one such animal, for were there two or more, these would be only parts of the one, and only one.”

Plato now first proceeds to the determination of the Idea of corporeal existence: “Because the world was to become corporeal, visible and tangible, and since without fire nothing can be seen, and without solidity, without earth, nothing can be touched, God in the beginning made fire and earth.” In this childlike way Plato introduces these extremes, solidity and life. “But two things cannot be united without a third, there must be a bond between them, uniting both”—one of Plato’s simple methods of expression. “The fairest bond, however, is that which most completely fuses itself and that which is bound by it.” That is a profound saying, in which the Notion is contained; the bond is the subjective and individual, the power which dominates the other, which makes itself identical with it. “Proportion” (ἀναλογία) is best adapted to effect such a fusion; that is, whenever of three numbers or magnitudes or powers, that which is the mean is to the last term what the first term is to the mean, and again when the mean is to the first term as the last term is to the mean (a : b = b : c) “then the mean having become the first and last, and the first and last both having become means, all things will necessarily come to be the same; but having come to be the same, everything will be one.” This is excellent, we have still preserved this in our Philosophy; it is the distinction which is no distinction. This diremption from which Plato proceeds, is the conclusion which we know from logic; it appears in the form of the ordinary syllogism, in which, however, the whole rationality of the Idea is, at least externally, contained. The distinctions are the extremes, and the mean is the identity which in a supreme degree makes them one; the conclusion is thus speculative, and in the extremes unites itself with itself, because all the terms pass through all the different positions. It is hence a mistake to disparage the conclusion and not to recognize it as the highest and absolute form; in respect of the conclusions arrived at by the understanding, on the contrary, we should be right in rejecting it. This last has no such mean; each of the differences is there recognized as different in its own independent form, as having a character different from that of the other. This, in the Platonic philosophy, is abrogated, and the speculative element in it constitutes the proper and true form of conclusion, in which the extremes neither remain in independence as regards themselves, nor as regards the mean. In the conclusion of the understanding, on the contrary, the unity which is constituted is only the unity of essentially different contents which remain such; for here a subject, a determination, is, through the mean, simply bound up with another, or “some conception is joined to some other conception.” In a rational conclusion, however, the main point of its speculative content is the identity of the extremes which are joined to one another; in this it is involved that the subject presented in the mean is a content which does not join itself with another, but only through the other and in the other with itself. In other words, this constitutes the essential nature of God, who, when made subject, is the fact that He begot His Son, the world; but in this reality which appears as another, He still remains identical with Himself, does away with the separation implied in the Fall, and, in the other, merely unites Himself to Himself and thus becomes Spirit. When the immediate is elevated over the mediate and it is then said that God’s actions are immediate, there is, indeed, good ground for the assertion; but the concrete fact is that God is a conclusion which, by differentiating itself, unites itself to itself, and, through the abrogation of the mediation, reinstates its own immediacy. In the Platonic philosophy we thus have what is best and highest; the thoughts are, indeed, merely pure thoughts, but they contain everything in themselves; for all concrete forms depend on thought-determinations alone. The Fathers thus found in Plato the Trinity which they wished to comprehend and prove in thought: with Plato the truth really has the same determination as the Trinity. But these forms have been neglected for two thousand years since Plato’s time, for they have not passed into the Christian religion as thoughts; indeed they were considered to be ideas which had entered in through error, until quite recent times, when men began to understand that the Notion is contained in these determinations, and that nature and spirit can thus be comprehended through their means.

Plato continues: “Since what is solid requires two means, because it not only has breadth but also depth, God has placed air and water between fire and earth; and indeed He gave to them the same proportion, so that fire is related to air as air to water, and as air is to water, so is water to earth.” Thus we have, properly speaking, four methods of representing space, inasmuch as the point is, through line and surface, closely bound up with the solid body. The sundered mean here discovered, again indicates an important thought of logical profundity; and the number four which here appears, is in nature a fundamental number. For as being the different which is turned towards the two extremes, the mean must be separated in itself. In the conclusion in which God is the One, the second (the mediating), the Son; the third, the Spirit; the mean indeed is simple. But the cause why that which in the rational conclusion is merely three-fold, passes in nature to the four-fold, rests in what is natural, because what in thought is immediately the one, becomes separate in Nature. But in order that in Nature the opposition should exist as opposition, it must itself be a twofold, and thus, when we count, we have four. This also takes place in the conception of God, for when we apply it to the world, we have nature as mean and the existent spirit as the way of return for nature: when the return is made, this is the absolute Spirit. This living process, this separation and unifying of differences, is the living God.

Plato says further: “Through this unity the visible and tangible world has been made. And it comes to pass by God’s having given to it these elements entire and unseparated, that it is perfect, and unaffected by age and disease. For old age and disease only arise from a body’s being worked upon by a superabundance of such elements from without. But here this is not so, for the world contains those elements entirely in itself, and nothing can come to it from without. The world is spherical in form,” (as it was to Parmenides and the Pythagoreans) “as being most perfect, and as containing all others in itself; it is perfectly smooth, since for it there is nothing outside, and it requires no limbs.” Finitude consists in this, that a distinction as regards something else is an externality to some other object. In the Idea we certainly have determination, limitation, difference, other-being, but it is at the same time dissolved, contained, gathered together, in the one. Thus it is a difference through which no finitude arises, seeing that it likewise is sublated. Finitude is thus in the infinite itself, and this is, indeed, a great thought. “God gave the world the most appropriate motion of all the seven, being that which harmonizes best with mind and consciousness, motion in a circle; the other six He took away from it and liberated it from their variations” (movements backwards and forwards). This is only a popular way of putting it.

We read further: “Since God wished to make the world a God, He gave it soul, and this was placed in the centre and diffused through the whole, which was also surrounded by it externally; and in this way He brought to pass the self-sufficing existence which required no other, and which needed no other friendship or acquaintance than itself. Through these means God created the world as a blessed God.” We may say that here, where the world is a totality through the world-soul, we first have the knowledge of the Idea; for the first time this newly-begotten God, as the mean and identity, is the true absolute. That first God which was only goodness, is, on the contrary, a mere hypothesis, and hence neither determined nor self-determining. “Now though we have spoken of the soul last,” Plato goes on, “it does not for that reason come last; for this is merely our manner of speech. The soul is the ruler, the king, and the body is its subject.” It is only Plato’s naïvety which ascribes the reversal of the order of the two to a manner of speech. What here appears as contingent is really necessary—that is, to begin with the immediate and then come to the concrete. We must likewise adopt this method, but with the consciousness that when we begin with determinations such as Being, or God, Space, Time, &c., we speak of them in an immediate manner, and this content, in accordance with its nature, is at first immediate, and consequently undetermined in itself. God, for example, with whom we begin as an immediate, is proved only at the last, and then, indeed, as the true first. Thus we can, as already remarked, (p. 72) show Plato’s confusion of mind in such presentations; but it depends entirely on what Plato’s standard of truth is.

Plato further shows us the nature of the Idea in one of the most famous and profound of passages, where in the essence of the soul he recognizes again the very same idea that he also expressed as the essence of the corporeal. For he says: “The soul is created in the following way: Of the indivisible and unchangeable and also of the divisible which is corporeal, God made a third kind of intermediate essence, which partook of the nature of the same and of the nature of the other or diverse.” (The divisible is to Plato likewise the other as such, or in itself, and not of anything else.) “And God in like manner made the soul a sort of intermediate between the indivisible and the divisible.” Here the abstract determinations of the one which is identity, of the many or non-identical, which is opposition and difference, once more appear. If we say: “God, the Absolute, is the identity of the identical and non-identical,” a cry is raised of barbarism and scholasticism. Those who speak of it so still hold Plato in high esteem, and yet it was thus that he determined the truth. “And taking these three elements as separate, God mingled them all into one Idea, because he forcibly compressed the incongruous nature of the other into the same.” This is undoubtedly the power of the Notion, which posits the many, the separate, as the ideal, and that is also the force applied to the understanding when anything is placed before it.

Plato now describes how the self-identical, as itself a moment, and the other or matter, and the third, the apparently dissoluble union which has not returned into the first unity—which three were originally separated—have now, in simple reflection into self and resumption of that beginning, been degraded into moments. “Mingling the identical and the other with the essence (οὐσία),” the third moment, “and making them all one, God again divided this whole into as many parts was as fitting.” Since this substance of the soul is identical with that of the visible world, the one whole is for the first time the now systematized substance, the true matter, the absolute element which is internally divided, an enduring and unseparable unity of the one and many; and no other essence must be demanded. The manner and mode of the division of this subjectivity contain the famous Platonic numbers, which doubtless originally pertain to the Pythagoreans, and respecting which both ancients and moderns, and even Kepler himself in his Harmonia mundi, have taken much pains, but which no one has properly understood. To understand would mean two things, and in the first place, the recognition of their speculative significance, their Notion. But, as already remarked of the Pythagoreans (Vol. I. p. 224), these distinctions of number give only an indefinite conception of difference, and that only in the earlier numbers; where the relationships become more complicated, they are quite incapable of designating them more closely. In the second place, because of their being numbers, they express, as differences of magnitude, differences in what is sensuous only. The system of apparent magnitude—and it is in the heavenly system that magnitude appears most purely and freely, liberated from what is qualitative—must correspond to them. But these living number-spheres are themselves systems composed of many elements—both of the magnitude of distance and of velocity and mass. No one of these elements, taken as a succession of simple numbers, can be likened to the system of heavenly spheres, for the series corresponding to this system can, as to its members, contain nothing else than the system of all these moments. Now if the Platonic numbers were also the elements of each system such as this, it would not be only this element which would have to be taken into account, for the relationship of moments which become distinguished in movement has to be conceived of as a whole, and is the true object of interest and reason. What we have to do is to give briefly the main points as matter of history; we have the most thorough treatment of it given us by Böckh “On the Constitution of the World-Soul in the Timæus of Plato,” in the third volume of the Studies of Daub and Creuzer (p. 26 et seq.).

The fundamental series is very simple: “God first took one part out of the whole; then the second, the double of the first; the third is one and a half times as many as the second, or three times the first; the next is double the second; the fifth is three times the third; the sixth is eight times the first; the seventh is twenty-seven times greater than the first.” Hence the series is: 1; 2; 3; 4 = 2²; 9 = 3²; 8 = 2³; 27 = 3³. “Then God filled up the double and triple intervals” (the relations 1 : 2 and 1 : 3) “by again abstracting portions from the whole. These parts he placed in the intervals in such a way that in each interval there were two means, the one exceeding and exceeded by the extremes in the same ratio, the other being that kind of mean which by an equal number exceeds and is exceeded by the extremes.” That is, the first is a constant geometric relationship, and the other is an arithmetical. The first mean, brought about through the quadration, is thus in the relation 1 : 2, for example, the proportion 1 : √̅2 : 2; the other is in the same relation, the number 1½. Hereby new relations arise which are again in a specially given and more difficult method inserted into that first, but this is done in such a way that everywhere something has been left out, and the last relation of number to number is 256 : 243, or 2 : 3.

Much progress is not, however, made with these number-relations, for they do not present much to the speculative Notion. The relationships and laws of nature cannot be expressed by these barren numbers; they form an empirical relation which does not constitute the basis of the proportions of nature. Plato now says: “God divided this entire series lengthways into two parts which he set together crosswise like an X, and he bent their ends into a circular form and comprehended them in a uniform motion—forming an inner circle and an outer—and he called the motion of the outer circle the motion of the same, and that of the inner the motion of the diverse, giving supremacy to the former, and leaving it intact. But the inner motion he again split into seven orbits after the same relations; three of these he made to move with equal velocity, and four with unequal velocity to the three and to one another. This is the system of the soul within which all that is corporeal is formed; the soul is the centre, it penetrates the whole and envelopes it from without and moves in itself. Thus it has the divine beginning of a never-ceasing and rational life in itself.” This is not quite devoid of confusion, and from it we can only grasp the general fact that as to Plato with the idea of the corporeal universe that of the soul enters in as the all-embracing and simple, to him the essence of the corporeal and of the soul is unity in difference. This double essence, posited in and for itself in difference, becomes systematized within the one in many moments, which are, however, movements; thus this reality and that essence both pertain to this whole in the antithesis of soul and body, and this again is one. Mind is what penetrates all, and to it the corporeal is opposed as truly as that it itself is mind.

This is a general description of the soul which is posited in the world and reigns over it; and in as far as the substantial, which is in matter, is similar to it, their inherent identity is asserted. The fact that in it the same moments which constitute its reality are contained, merely signifies that God, as absolute Substance, does not see anything other than Himself. Plato hence describes the relation of soul to objective reality thus: it, if it touches any of the moments, whether dispersed in parts or indivisible, is stirred in all its powers to declare the sameness and the difference of that or some other thing, and how, where, and when, the individual is related to the other and to the universal. “Now when the orbit of the sensuous, moving in its due course, imparts knowledge of itself to its whole soul” (where the different orbits of the world’s course show themselves to correspond with the inwardness of mind) “true opinions and beliefs arise. But when the soul applies itself to the rational and the orbit of the self-identical makes itself known, thought is perfected into knowledge.” This is the essential reality of the world as of the inherently blessed God; here the Idea of the whole is for the first time perfected, and, in accordance with this Idea, the world first makes its appearance. What had hitherto appeared was the reality of the sensuous only and not the world as sensuous, for though Plato certainly spoke before of fire, &c. (p. 75), he there gave only the reality of the sensuous; he would hence have done better to have omitted these expressions. In them we have the reason for its appearing as if Plato had here begun to consider from the beginning that of which he has already treated (supra, p. 72). For since we must begin from the abstract in order to reach the true and the concrete, which first appears later on (supra, p. 79), this last, when it has been found, has the appearance and form of a new commencement, particularly in Plato’s loose style.

Plato now goes on further, for he calls this divine world the pattern which is in thought (νοητόν) alone, and always in self-identity; but he again places this whole in opposition to itself, so that there is a second, the copy of the first, the world, which has origination and is visible. This second is the system of the heavenly movement, the first is the eternally living. The second, which has origination and becoming within it, cannot be made perfectly like the first, the eternal Idea. But it is made a self-moving image of the eternal that remains in the unity; and this eternal image that moves rhythmically, after the manner of numbers, is what we call time. Plato says of it that we are in the habit of calling the ‘was’ and ‘will be’ parts of time, and we transfer these indications of change which operate in time, into absolute essence. But the true time is eternal, or the present. For the substance can neither become older nor younger, and time, as the immediate image of the eternal, has neither the future nor the present in its parts. Time is ideal, like space, not sensuous, but the immediate mode in which mind comes forth in objective form, the sensuous non-sensuous. The real moments of the principle of absolute movement in what is temporal, are those in which changes appear. “From the mind and will of God in the creation of time, there arose the sun, moon, and five other stars which are called the planets, and which serve to distinguish and preserve the relations of time.” For in them the numbers of time are realized. Thus the heavenly movement, as the true time, is the image of the eternal which yet remains in unity, i.e. it is that in which the eternal retains the determination of the ‘same.’ For everything is in time, that is, in negative unity which does not allow anything to root itself freely in itself, and thus to move and to be moved according to chance.

But this eternal is also in the determinateness of the other reality, in the Idea of the self-changing and variable principle whose universal is matter. The eternal world has a likeness in the world which belongs to time, but opposed to this there is a second world where change really dwells. The ‘same’ and the ‘other’ are the most abstract opposes that we hitherto have had. The eternal world as posited in time has thus two forms—the form of similarity and the form of differentiality, of variability. The three moments as they appear in the last sphere, are, in the first place, simple essence which is begotten, which has arisen, or determinate matter; secondly the place in which it is begotten, and thirdly that in which what is begotten has its pattern. Plato gives them thus: “Essence (ὄν), place, and generation.” We thus have the conclusion in which space is the mean between individual generation and the universal. If we now oppose this principle to time in its negativity, the mean is this principle of the ‘other’ as the universal principle—“a receiving medium like a mother”—an essence which contains everything, gives to everything an independent subsistence and the power to do as is desired. This principle is destitute of form, yet capable of receiving all forms, the universal principle of all that appears different; it is the false passive matter that we understand when we speak of it—the relative substantial, existence generally, but external existence here, and only abstract Being-for-self. Form is in our reflection distinguished from it, and this, Plato tells us, first comes into existence through the mother. In this principle we have what we call the phenomenal, for matter is just this subsistence of individual generation, in which division is posited. But what appears herein is not to be posited as the individual of earthly existence, but is to be apprehended as the universal in such determinateness. Since matter, as the universal, is the principle of all that is individual, Plato in the first place reminds us that we cannot speak of these sensuous things—fire, water, earth, air, &c. (which thus once more come before us here); for hereby they are expressed as a fixed determination which remains as such—but what remains is only their universality, or they, as universal, are only the fiery, earthly, &c.

Plato further expounds the determinate reality of these sensuous things, or their simple determinateness. In this world of change form is figure in space; for as in the world, which is the immediate image of the eternal, time is the absolute principle, here the absolute ideal principle is pure matter as such, i.e. the existence of space. Space is the ideal essence of this phenomenal world, the mean which unites positivity and negativity, but its determinations are figures. And, indeed, of the different dimensions of space, it is surface which must be taken as true reality, for it is the absolute mean between the line and point in space, and in its first real limitation it is three; similarly the triangle is first among the figures, while the circle has no limit as such within it. Here Plato comes to the deduction of configuration, in which the triangle forms the principle; thus triangles form the essence of sensuous things. Hence he says, in Pythagorean fashion, that the compounding and uniting together of these triangles, as their Idea pertaining to the mean, constitutes once more, according to the original number-relations, the sensuous elements. This is the principle, but how Plato determines the figures of the elements, and the union of the triangles, I refrain from considering.

From this point Plato passes to a system of Physics and Physiology into which we have no intention of following him. It is to be regarded as a first, childlike endeavour to understand sensuous phenomena in their manifold character, but as yet it is superficial and confused. Sensuous manifestations, such as the parts and limbs of the body, are here taken into consideration, and an account of this is given intermingled with thoughts which resemble our formal explanations, and in which the Notion really vanishes. We have to remember the elevated nature of the Idea, as being the main point of excellence in his explanations, for, as far as the realization of the same is concerned, Plato merely felt and expressed it to be a necessity. Speculative thought is often recognizable, but, for the most part, consideration is directed to quite external modes of explanation, such as that of end. The method of treating Physics is a different one from ours, for while with Plato empirical knowledge is still deficient, in modern Physics, on the other hand, the deficiency is found in the Idea. Plato, although he does not seem to conform to our theory of Physics, ignoring as it does the theory of life, and though he proceeds to talk in a childlike way in external analogies, yet in certain cases gives utterance to very deep perceptions, which would be well worthy of our consideration if the contemplation of nature as living had any place with our physicists. His manner of relating the physiological to the physical would be as interesting. Certain portions of his system contain a general element, such as his representation of colours, and from this he goes on to more general considerations. For when Plato begins to talk on this subject, he says of the difficulty of distinguishing and recognizing the individual, that in the contemplation of nature there are “two causes to be distinguished, the one necessary and the other divine. The divine must be sought for in all things with the view of attaining to a blessed life” (this endeavour is an end in and for itself, and in it we find happiness) “in as far as our nature admits, but the necessary causes need be sought only for the sake of divine things, considering that without these necessary causes” (as conditions of knowledge) “we cannot know them.” Contemplation in accordance with necessity is the external contemplation of objects, their connection, relation, &c. “Of the divine, God Himself was the creator,” the divine belongs to that first eternal world—not as to one beyond, but to one now present. “But the creation and disposition of the mortal He committed to His offspring (γεννήμασι).” This is a simple way of passing from the divine to the finite and earthly. “Now they, imitating the divine, because they had received the immortal principle of a soul, fashioned a mortal body, and placed in this a soul of another nature, which was mortal. This mortal nature was subject to violent and irresistible affections—the first of these was pleasure, the greatest incitement to evil, and then pain which is the deterrent (φυγάς) from doing good; also rashness (θάῤῥος) and fear, two foolish counsellors; anger, hope, &c. These sensations all belong to the mortal soul. And that the divine might not be polluted more than necessary, the subordinate gods separated this mortal nature from the seat of the divine, and gave it a different habitation in another part of the body, placing the neck so as to be the isthmus and boundary between head and breast.” The sensations, affections, &c., dwell in the breast or in the heart (we place that which is immortal in the heart); the spiritual is in the head. But in order to make the former as perfect as might be, “they placed,” for instance, “as a supporter to the heart which was burnt with passion, the lung, soft and bloodless, and which had within it hollows like the pores of a sponge, in order that, receiving the breath and drink, it might cool the heart and allow of refreshment and an alleviation of the heat.”

What Plato says of the liver is specially worthy of notice. “Since the irrational part of the soul which desires eating and drinking does not listen to reason, God made the liver so that the soul might be inspired with terror by the power of thought which originates from reason, and which descends upon the liver as on a mirror, receiving upon it figures and giving back images. But if this part of the soul is once more assuaged, in sleep it participates in visions. For the authors of our being, remembering the command of their father to make the human race as good as they could, thus ordered our inferior parts in order that they also might obtain a measure of truth, and placed the oracle in them.” Plato thus ascribes divination to the irrational, corporeal part of man, and although it is often thought that revelation, &c., is by Plato ascribed to reason, this is a false idea; he says that there is a reason, but in irrationality. “Herein we have a conclusive proof that God has given the art of divination to the irrationality of man, for no man when in his wits, attains prophetic truth and inspiration, but when he receives the inspiration either his intelligence is enthralled by sleep or he is demented by some distemper or possession.” Thus Plato makes divination of a lower grade than conscious knowledge. “And when he has recovered his senses he has to remember and explain what he has received, for while he is demented, he cannot judge of it. The ancient saying is therefore very true, that only a man who has his wits can act or judge about himself or his own affairs.” Plato is called the patron saint of mere possession, but, according to this, the assertion is entirely false. These are the principal points in Plato’s Philosophy of Nature.