PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: SOCRATES; CRITIAS; TIMAEUS; HERMOCRATES

Socrates. One, two, three; but where, my dear Timaeus, is the fourthof those who were yesterday my guests and are to be my entertainersto-day?

Timaeus. He has been taken ill, Socrates; for he would not willinglyhave been absent from this gathering.

Soc. Then, if he is not coming, you and the two others must supplyhis place.

Tim. Certainly, and we will do all that we can; having beenhandsomely entertained by you yesterday, those of us who remain shouldbe only too glad to return your hospitality.

Soc. Do you remember what were the points of which I required you tospeak?

Tim. We remember some of them, and you will be here to remind usof anything which we have forgotten: or rather, if we are nottroubling you, will you briefly recapitulate the whole, and then theparticulars will be more firmly fixed in our memories?

Soc. To be sure I will: the chief theme of my yesterday'sdiscourse was the State-how constituted and of what citizenscomposed it would seem likely to be most perfect.

Tim. Yes, Socrates; and what you said of it was very much to ourmind.

Soc. Did we not begin by separating the husbandmen and theartisans from the class of defenders of the State?

Tim. Yes.

Soc. And when we had given to each one that single employment andparticular art which was suited to his nature, we spoke of those whowere intended to be our warriors, and said that they were to beguardians of the city against attacks from within as well as fromwithout, and to have no other employment; they were to be mercifulin judging their subjects, of whom they were by nature friends, butfierce to their enemies, when they came across them in battle.

Tim. Exactly.

Soc. We said, if I am not mistaken, that the guardians should begifted with a temperament in a high degree both passionate andphilosophical; and that then they would be as they ought to be, gentleto their friends and fierce with their enemies.

Tim. Certainly.

Soc. And what did we say of their education? Were they not to betrained in gymnastic, and music, and all other sorts of knowledgewhich were proper for them?

Tim. Very true.

Soc. And being thus trained they were not to consider gold or silveror anything else to be their own private property; they were to belike hired troops, receiving pay for keeping guard from those who wereprotected by them-the pay was to be no more than would suffice for menof simple life; and they were to spend in common, and to live togetherin the continual practice of virtue, which was to be their solepursuit.

Tim. That was also said.

Soc. Neither did we forget the women; of whom we declared, thattheir natures should be assimilated and brought into harmony withthose of the men, and that common pursuits should be assigned tothem both in time of war and in their ordinary life.

Tim. That, again, was as you say.

Soc. And what about the procreation of children? Or rather not theproposal too singular to be forgotten? for all wives and children wereto be in common, to the intent that no one should ever know his ownchild, but they were to imagine that they were all one family; thosewho were within a suitable limit of age were to be brothers andsisters, those who were of an elder generation parents andgrandparents, and those of a younger children and grandchildren.

Tim. Yes, and the proposal is easy to remember, as you say.

Soc. And do you also remember how, with a view of securing as far aswe could the best breed, we said that the chief magistrates, maleand female, should contrive secretly, by the use of certain lots, soto arrange the nuptial meeting, that the bad of either sex and thegood of either sex might pair with their like; and there was to beno quarrelling on this account, for they would imagine that theunion was a mere accident, and was to be attributed to the lot?

Tim. I remember.

Soc. And you remember how we said that the children of the goodparents were to be educated, and the children of the bad secretlydispersed among the inferior citizens; and while they were all growingup the rulers were to be on the look-out, and to bring up from belowin their turn those who were worthy, and those among themselves whowere unworthy were to take the places of those who came up?

Tim. True.

Soc. Then have I now given you all the heads of our yesterday'sdiscussion? Or is there anything more, my dear Timaeus, which has beenomitted?

Tim. Nothing, Socrates; it was just as you have said.

Soc. I should like, before proceeding further, to tell you how Ifeel about the State which we have described. I might compare myselfto a person who, on beholding beautiful animals either created bythe painter's art, or, better still, alive but at rest, is seized witha desire of seeing them in motion or engaged in some struggle orconflict to which their forms appear suited; this is my feelingabout the State which we have been describing. There are conflictswhich all cities undergo, and I should like to hear some one tell ofour own city carrying on a struggle against her neighbours, and howshe went out to war in a becoming manner, and when at war showed bythe greatness of her actions and the magnanimity of her words indealing with other cities a result worthy of her training andeducation. Now I, Critias and Hermocrates, am conscious that Imyself should never be able to celebrate the city and her citizensin a befitting manner, and I am not surprised at my own incapacity; tome the wonder is rather that the poets present as well as past areno better-not that I mean to depreciate them; but every one can seethat they are a tribe of imitators, and will imitate best and mosteasily the life in which they have been brought up; while that whichis beyond the range of a man's education he finds hard to carry out inaction, and still harder adequately to represent in language. I amaware that the Sophists have plenty of brave words and fairconceits, but I am afraid that being only wanderers from one city toanother, and having never had habitations of their own, they mayfail in their conception of philosophers and statesmen, and may notknow what they do and say in time of war, when they are fighting orholding parley with their enemies. And thus people of your class arethe only ones remaining who are fitted by nature and education to takepart at once both in politics and philosophy. Here is Timaeus, ofLocris in Italy, a city which has admirable laws, and who is himselfin wealth and rank the equal of any of his fellow-citizens; he hasheld the most important and honourable offices in his own state,and, as I believe, has scaled the heights of all philosophy; andhere is Critias, whom every Athenian knows to be no novice in thematters of which we are speaking; and as to, Hermocrates, I am assuredby many witnesses that his genius and education qualify him to takepart in any speculation of the kind. And therefore yesterday when Isaw that you wanted me to describe the formation of the State, Ireadily assented, being very well aware, that, if you only would, nonewere better qualified to carry the discussion further, and that whenyou had engaged our city in a suitable war, you of all men livingcould best exhibit her playing a fitting part. When I had completed mytask, I in return imposed this other task upon you. You conferredtogether and agreed to entertain me to-day, as I had entertainedyou, with a feast of discourse. Here am I in festive array, and no mancan be more ready for the promised banquet.

Her. And we too, Socrates, as Timaeus says, will not be wanting inenthusiasm; and there is no excuse for not complying with yourrequest. As soon as we arrived yesterday at the guest-chamber ofCritias, with whom we are staying, or rather on our way thither, wetalked the matter over, and he told us an ancient tradition, which Iwish, Critias, that you would repeat to Socrates, so that he mayhelp us to judge whether it will satisfy his requirements or not.

Crit. I will, if Timaeus, who is our other partner, approves.

Tim. I quite approve.

Crit. Then listen, Socrates, to a tale which, though strange, iscertainly true, having been attested by Solon, who was the wisest ofthe seven sages. He was a relative and a dear friend of mygreat-grandfather, Dropides, as he himself says in many passages ofhis poems; and he told the story to Critias, my grandfather, whoremembered and repeated it to us. There were of old, he said, greatand marvellous actions of the Athenian city, which have passed intooblivion through lapse of time and the destruction of mankind, and onein particular, greater than all the rest. This we will now rehearse.It will be a fitting monument of our gratitude to you, and a hymn ofpraise true and worthy of the goddess, on this her day of festival.

Soc. Very good. And what is this ancient famous action of theAthenians, which Critias declared, on the authority of Solon, to benot a mere legend, but an actual fact?

Crit. I will tell an old-world story which I heard from an aged man;for Critias, at the time of telling it, was as he said, nearlyninety years of age, and I was about ten. Now the day was that dayof the Apaturia which is called the Registration of Youth, at which,according to custom, our parents gave prizes for recitations, andthe poems of several poets were recited by us boys, and many of ussang the poems of Solon, which at that time had not gone out offashion. One of our tribe, either because he thought so or to pleaseCritias, said that in his judgment Solon was not only the wisest ofmen, but also the noblest of poets. The old man, as I very wellremember, brightened up at hearing this and said, smiling: Yes,Amynander, if Solon had only, like other poets, made poetry thebusiness of his life, and had completed the tale which he brought withhim from Egypt, and had not been compelled, by reason of thefactions and troubles which he found stirring in his own countrywhen he came home, to attend to other matters, in my opinion hewould have been as famous as Homer or Hesiod, or any poet.

And what was the tale about, Critias? said Amynander.

About the greatest action which the Athenians ever did, and whichought to have been the most famous, but, through the lapse of time andthe destruction of the actors, it has not come down to us.

Tell us, said the other, the whole story, and how and from whomSolon heard this veritable tradition.

He replied:-In the Egyptian Delta, at the head of which the riverNile divides, there is a certain district which is called the districtof Sais, and the great city of the district is also called Sais, andis the city from which King Amasis came. The citizens have a deity fortheir foundress; she is called in the Egyptian tongue Neith, and isasserted by them to be the same whom the Hellenes call Athene; theyare great lovers of the Athenians, and say that they are in some wayrelated to them. To this city came Solon, and was received therewith great honour; he asked the priests who were most skilful insuch matters, about antiquity, and made the discovery that neitherhe nor any other Hellene knew anything worth mentioning about thetimes of old. On one occasion, wishing to draw them on to speak ofantiquity, he began to tell about the most ancient things in ourpart of the world-about Phoroneus, who is called "the first man,"and about Niobe; and after the Deluge, of the survival of Deucalionand Pyrrha; and he traced the genealogy of their descendants, andreckoning up the dates, tried to compute how many years ago the eventsof which he was speaking happened. Thereupon one of the priests, whowas of a very great age, said: O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes arenever anything but children, and there is not an old man among you.Solon in return asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied,that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed downamong you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary withage. And I will tell you why. There have been, and will be again, manydestructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatesthave been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and otherlesser ones by innumerable other causes. There is a story, whicheven you have preserved, that once upon a time Paethon, the son ofHelios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because hewas not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up allthat was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt.Now this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination ofthe bodies moving in the heavens around the earth, and a greatconflagration of things upon the earth, which recurs after longintervals; at such times those who live upon the mountains and indry and lofty places are more liable to destruction than those whodwell by rivers or on the seashore. And from this calamity the Nile,who is our never-failing saviour, delivers and preserves us. When,on the other hand, the gods purge the earth with a deluge of water,the survivors in your country are herdsmen and shepherds who dwellon the mountains, but those who, like you, live in cities arecarried by the rivers into the sea. Whereas in this land, neither thennor at any other time, does the water come down from above on thefields, having always a tendency to come up from below; for whichreason the traditions preserved here are the most ancient.

The fact is, that wherever the extremity of winter frost or ofsummer does not prevent, mankind exist, sometimes in greater,sometimes in lesser numbers. And whatever happened either in yourcountry or in ours, or in any other region of which we are informed-ifthere were any actions noble or great or in any other wayremarkable, they have all been written down by us of old, and arepreserved in our temples. Whereas just when you and other nationsare beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisitesof civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven,like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only those of youwho are destitute of letters and education; and so you have to beginall over again like children, and know nothing of what happened inancient times, either among us or among yourselves. As for thosegenealogies of yours which you just now recounted to us, Solon, theyare no better than the tales of children. In the first place youremember a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones; inthe next place, you do not know that there formerly dwelt in your landthe fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, and that you andyour whole city are descended from a small seed or remnant of themwhich survived. And this was unknown to you, because, for manygenerations, the survivors of that destruction died, leaving nowritten word. For there was a time, Solon, before the great delugeof all, when the city which now is Athens was first in war and inevery way the best governed of all cities, is said to have performedthe noblest deeds and to have had the fairest constitution of any ofwhich tradition tells, under the face of heaven.

Solon marvelled at his words, and earnestly requested the priests toinform him exactly and in order about these former citizens. You arewelcome to hear about them, Solon, said the priest, both for yourown sake and for that of your city, and above all, for the sake of thegoddess who is the common patron and parent and educator of both ourcities. She founded your city a thousand years before ours,receiving from the Earth and Hephaestus the seed of your race, andafterwards she founded ours, of which the constitution is recordedin our sacred registers to be eight thousand years old. As touchingyour citizens of nine thousand years ago, I will briefly inform you oftheir laws and of their most famous action; the exact particulars ofthe whole we will hereafter go through at our leisure in the sacredregisters themselves. If you compare these very laws with ours youwill find that many of ours are the counterpart of yours as theywere in the olden time. In the first place, there is the caste ofpriests, which is separated from all the others; next, there are theartificers, who ply their several crafts by themselves and do notintermix; and also there is the class of shepherds and of hunters,as well as that of husbandmen; and you will observe, too, that thewarriors in Egypt are distinct from all the other classes, and arecommanded by the law to devote themselves solely to military pursuits;moreover, the weapons which they carry are shields and spears, a styleof equipment which the goddess taught of Asiatics first to us, as inyour part of the world first to you. Then as to wisdom, do you observehow our law from the very first made a study of the whole order ofthings, extending even to prophecy and medicine which gives health,out of these divine elements deriving what was needful for human life,and adding every sort of knowledge which was akin to them. All thisorder and arrangement the goddess first imparted to you whenestablishing your city; and she chose the spot of earth in which youwere born, because she saw that the happy temperament of the seasonsin that land would produce the wisest of men. Wherefore the goddess,who was a lover both of war and of wisdom, selected and first of allsettled that spot which was the most likely to produce men likestherself. And there you dwelt, having such laws as these and stillbetter ones, and excelled all mankind in all virtue, as became thechildren and disciples of the gods.

Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state in ourhistories. But one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness andvalour. For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovokedmade an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and towhich your city put an end. This power came forth out of theAtlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; andthere was an island situated in front of the straits which are byyou called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libyaand Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and fromthese you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent whichsurrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits ofHeracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that otheris a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called aboundless continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there was agreat and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island andseveral others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, themen of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns ofHeracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This vastpower, gathered into one, endeavoured to subdue at a blow ourcountry and yours and the whole of the region within the straits;and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of hervirtue and strength, among all mankind. She was pre-eminent in courageand military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when therest fell off from her, being compelled to stand alone, after havingundergone the very extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphedover the invaders, and preserved from slavery those who were not yetsubjugated, and generously liberated all the rest of us who dwellwithin the pillars. But afterwards there occurred violentearthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortuneall your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the islandof Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. Forwhich reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable,because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by thesubsidence of the island.

I have told you briefly, Socrates, what the aged Critias heardfrom Solon and related to us. And when you were speaking yesterdayabout your city and citizens, the tale which I have just beenrepeating to you came into my mind, and I remarked with astonishmenthow, by some mysterious coincidence, you agreed in almost everyparticular with the narrative of Solon; but I did not like to speak atthe moment. For a long time had elapsed, and I had forgotten too much;I thought that I must first of all run over the narrative in my ownmind, and then I would speak. And so I readily assented to yourrequest yesterday, considering that in all such cases the chiefdifficulty is to find a tale suitable to our purpose, and that withsuch a tale we should be fairly well provided.

And therefore, as Hermocrates has told you, on my way home yesterdayI at once communicated the tale to my companions as I remembered it;and after I left them, during the night by thinking I recovered nearlythe whole it. Truly, as is often said, the lessons of our childhoodmake wonderful impression on our memories; for I am not sure that Icould remember all the discourse of yesterday, but I should be muchsurprised if I forgot any of these things which I have heard very longago. I listened at the time with childlike interest to the old man'snarrative; he was very ready to teach me, and I asked him again andagain to repeat his words, so that like an indelible picture they werebranded into my mind. As soon as the day broke, I rehearsed them as hespoke them to my companions, that they, as well as myself, mighthave something to say. And now, Socrates, to make an end my preface, Iam ready to tell you the whole tale. I will give you not only thegeneral heads, but the particulars, as they were told to me. Thecity and citizens, which you yesterday described to us in fiction,we will now transfer to the world of reality. It shall be theancient city of Athens, and we will suppose that the citizens whom youimagined, were our veritable ancestors, of whom the priest spoke; theywill perfectly harmonise, and there will be no inconsistency in sayingthat the citizens of your republic are these ancient Athenians. Let usdivide the subject among us, and all endeavour according to ourability gracefully to execute the task which you have imposed upon us.Consider then, Socrates, if this narrative is suited to the purpose,or whether we should seek for some other instead.

Soc. And what other, Critias, can we find that will be better thanthis, which is natural and suitable to the festival of the goddess,and has the very great advantage of being a fact and not a fiction?How or where shall we find another if we abandon this? We cannot,and therefore you must tell the tale, and good luck to you; and I inreturn for my yesterday's discourse will now rest and be a listener.

Crit. Let me proceed to explain to you, Socrates, the order in whichwe have arranged our entertainment. Our intention is, that Timaeus,who is the most of an astronomer amongst us, and has made the natureof the universe his special study, should speak first, beginningwith the generation of the world and going down to the creation ofman; next, I am to receive the men whom he has created of whom somewill have profited by the excellent education which you have giventhem; and then, in accordance with the tale of Solon, and equally withhis law, we will bring them into court and make them citizens, as ifthey were those very Athenians whom the sacred Egyptian record hasrecovered from oblivion, and thenceforward we will speak of them asAthenians and fellow-citizens.

Soc. I see that I shall receive in my turn a perfect and splendidfeast of reason. And now, Timaeus, you, I suppose, should speaknext, after duly calling upon the Gods.

Tim. All men, Socrates, who have any degree of right feeling, at thebeginning of every enterprise, whether small or great, always callupon God. And we, too, who are going to discourse of the nature of theuniverse, how created or how existing without creation, if we be notaltogether out of our wits, must invoke the aid of Gods andGoddesses and pray that our words may be acceptable to them andconsistent with themselves. Let this, then, be our invocation of theGods, to which I add an exhortation of myself to speak in suchmanner as will be most intelligible to you, and will most accordwith my own intent.

First then, in my judgment, we must make a distinction and ask, Whatis that which always is and has no becoming; and what is that which isalways becoming and never is? That which is apprehended byintelligence and reason is always in the same state; but that which isconceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, isalways in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is. Noweverything that becomes or is created must of necessity be createdby some cause, for without a cause nothing can be created. The work ofthe creator, whenever he looks to the unchangeable and fashions theform and nature of his work after an unchangeable pattern, mustnecessarily be made fair and perfect; but when he looks to the createdonly, and uses a created pattern, it is not fair or perfect. Was theheaven then or the world, whether called by this or by any othermore appropriate name-assuming the name, I am asking a questionwhich has to be asked at the beginning of an enquiry aboutanything-was the world, I say, always in existence and withoutbeginning? or created, and had it a beginning? Created, I reply, beingvisible and tangible and having a body, and therefore sensible; andall sensible things are apprehended by opinion and sense and are ina process of creation and created. Now that which is created must,as we affirm, of necessity be created by a cause. But the father andmaker of all this universe is past finding out; and even if we foundhim, to tell of him to all men would be impossible. And there is stilla question to be asked about him: Which of the patterns had theartificer in view when he made the world-the pattern of theunchangeable, or of that which is created? If the world be indeed fairand the artificer good, it is manifest that he must have looked tothat which is eternal; but if what cannot be said without blasphemy istrue, then to the created pattern. Every one will see that he musthave looked to, the eternal; for the world is the fairest of creationsand he is the best of causes. And having been created in this way, theworld has been framed in the likeness of that which is apprehendedby reason and mind and is unchangeable, and must therefore ofnecessity, if this is admitted, be a copy of something. Now it isall-important that the beginning of everything should be accordingto nature. And in speaking of the copy and the original we mayassume that words are akin to the matter which they describe; whenthey relate to the lasting and permanent and intelligible, theyought to be lasting and unalterable, and, as far as their natureallows, irrefutable and immovable-nothing less. But when theyexpress only the copy or likeness and not the eternal thingsthemselves, they need only be likely and analogous to the realwords. As being is to becoming, so is truth to belief. If then,Socrates, amid the many opinions about the gods and the generationof the universe, we are not able to give notions which arealtogether and in every respect exact and consistent with one another,do not be surprised. Enough, if we adduce probabilities as likely asany others; for we must remember that I who am the speaker, and youwho are the judges, are only mortal men, and we ought to accept thetale which is probable and enquire no further.

Soc. Excellent, Timaeus; and we will do precisely as you bid us. Theprelude is charming, and is already accepted by us-may we beg of youto proceed to the strain?

Tim. Let me tell you then why the creator made this world ofgeneration. He was good, and the good can never have any jealousy ofanything. And being free from jealousy, he desired that all thingsshould be as like himself as they could be. This is in the truestsense the origin of creation and of the world, as we shall do wellin believing on the testimony of wise men: God desired that all thingsshould be good and nothing bad, so far as this was attainable.Wherefore also finding the whole visible sphere not at rest, butmoving in an irregular and disorderly fashion, out of disorder hebrought order, considering that this was in every way better thanthe other. Now the deeds of the best could never be or have been otherthan the fairest; and the creator, reflecting on the things whichare by nature visible, found that no unintelligent creature taken as awhole was fairer than the intelligent taken as a whole; and thatintelligence could not be present in anything which was devoid ofsoul. For which reason, when he was framing the universe, he putintelligence in soul, and soul in body, that he might be the creatorof a work which was by nature fairest and best. Wherefore, using thelanguage of probability, we may say that the world became a livingcreature truly endowed with soul and intelligence by the providence ofGod.

This being supposed, let us proceed to the next stage: In thelikeness of what animal did the Creator make the world? It would be anunworthy thing to liken it to any nature which exists as a partonly; for nothing can be beautiful which is like any imperfectthing; but let us suppose the world to be the very image of that wholeof which all other animals both individually and in their tribes areportions. For the original of the universe contains in itself allintelligible beings, just as this world comprehends us and all othervisible creatures. For the Deity, intending to make this world likethe fairest and most perfect of intelligible beings, framed onevisible animal comprehending within itself all other animals of akindred nature. Are we right in saying that there is one world, orthat they are many and infinite? There must be one only, if thecreated copy is to accord with the original. For that which includesall other intelligible creatures cannot have a second or companion; inthat case there would be need of another living being which wouldinclude both, and of which they would be parts, and the likeness wouldbe more truly said to resemble not them, but that other which includedthem. In order then that the world might be solitary, like the perfectanimal, the creator made not two worlds or an infinite number of them;but there is and ever will be one only-begotten and created heaven.

Now that which is created is of necessity corporeal, and alsovisible and tangible. And nothing is visible where there is no fire,or tangible which has no solidity, and nothing is solid without earth.Wherefore also God in the beginning of creation made the body of theuniverse to consist of fire and earth. But two things cannot berightly put together without a third; there must be some bond of unionbetween them. And the fairest bond is that which makes the mostcomplete fusion of itself and the things which it combines; andproportion is best adapted to effect such a union. For whenever in anythree numbers, whether cube or square, there is a mean, which is tothe last term what the first term is to it; and again, when the meanis to the first term as the last term is to the mean-then the meanbecoming first and last, and the first and last both becoming means,they will all of them of necessity come to be the same, and havingbecome the same with one another will be all one. If the universalframe had been created a surface only and having no depth, a singlemean would have sufficed to bind together itself and the otherterms; but now, as the world must be solid, and solid bodies arealways compacted not by one mean but by two, God placed water andair in the mean between fire and earth, and made them to have the sameproportion so far as was possible (as fire is to air so is air towater, and as air is to water so is water to earth); and thus he boundand put together a visible and tangible heaven. And for these reasons,and out of such elements which are in number four, the body of theworld was created, and it was harmonised by proportion, andtherefore has the spirit of friendship; and having been reconciledto itself, it was indissoluble by the hand of any other than theframer.

Now the creation took up the whole of each of the four elements; forthe Creator compounded the world out of all the fire and all the waterand all the air and all the earth, leaving no part of any of themnor any power of them outside. His intention was, in the firstplace, that the animal should be as far as possible a perfect wholeand of perfect parts: secondly, that it should be one, leaving noremnants out of which another such world might be created: and alsothat it should be free from old age and unaffected by disease.Considering that if heat and cold and other powerful forces whichunite bodies surround and attack them from without when they areunprepared, they decompose them, and by bringing diseases and oldage upon them, make them waste away-for this cause and on thesegrounds he made the world one whole, having every part entire, andbeing therefore perfect and not liable to old age and disease. Andhe gave to the world the figure which was suitable and also natural.Now to the animal which was to comprehend all animals, that figure wassuitable which comprehends within itself all other figures.Wherefore he made the world in the form of a globe, round as from alathe, having its extremes in every direction equidistant from thecentre, the most perfect and the most like itself of all figures;for he considered that the like is infinitely fairer than theunlike. This he finished off, making the surface smooth all around formany reasons; in the first place, because the living being had no needof eyes when there was nothing remaining outside him to be seen; norof ears when there was nothing to be heard; and there was nosurrounding atmosphere to be breathed; nor would there have been anyuse of organs by the help of which he might receive his food or getrid of what he had already digested, since there was nothing whichwent from him or came into him: for there was nothing beside him. Ofdesign he was created thus, his own waste providing his own food,and all that he did or suffered taking place in and by himself. Forthe Creator conceived that a being which was self-sufficient wouldbe far more excellent than one which lacked anything; and, as he hadno need to take anything or defend himself against any one, theCreator did not think it necessary to bestow upon him hands: nor hadhe any need of feet, nor of the whole apparatus of walking; but themovement suited to his spherical form was assigned to him, being ofall the seven that which is most appropriate to mind and intelligence;and he was made to move in the same manner and on the same spot,within his own limits revolving in a circle. All the other six motionswere taken away from him, and he was made not to partake of theirdeviations. And as this circular movement required no feet, theuniverse was created without legs and without feet.

Such was the whole plan of the eternal God about the god that was tobe, to whom for this reason he gave a body, smooth and even, havinga surface in every direction equidistant from the centre, a bodyentire and perfect, and formed out of perfect bodies. And in thecentre he put the soul, which he diffused throughout the body,making it also to be the exterior environment of it; and he made theuniverse a circle moving in a circle, one and solitary, yet byreason of its excellence able to converse with itself, and needingno other friendship or acquaintance. Having these purposes in viewhe created the world a blessed god.

Now God did not make the soul after the body, although we arespeaking of them in this order; for having brought them together hewould never have allowed that the elder should be ruled by theyounger; but this is a random manner of speaking which we have,because somehow we ourselves too are very much under the dominion ofchance. Whereas he made the soul in origin and excellence prior to andolder than the body, to be the ruler and mistress, of whom the bodywas to be the subject. And he made her out of the following elementsand on this wise: Out of the indivisible and unchangeable, and alsoout of that which is divisible and has to do with material bodies,he compounded a third and intermediate kind of essence, partaking ofthe nature of the same and of the other, and this compound he placedaccordingly in a mean between the indivisible, and the divisible andmaterial. He took the three elements of the same, the other, and theessence, and mingled them into one form, compressing by force thereluctant and unsociable nature of the other into the same. When hehad mingled them with the essence and out of three made one, heagain divided this whole into as many portions as was fitting, eachportion being a compound of the same, the other, and the essence.And he proceeded to divide after this manner:-First of all, he tookaway one part of the whole [1], and then he separated a second partwhich was double the first [2], and then he took away a third partwhich was half as much again as the second and three times as muchas the first [3], and then he took a fourth part which was twice asmuch as the second [4], and a fifth part which was three times thethird [9], and a sixth part which was eight times the first [8], and aseventh part which was twenty-seven times the first [27]. After thishe filled up the double intervals [i.e. between 1, 2, 4, 8] and thetriple [i.e. between 1, 3, 9, 27] cutting off yet other portionsfrom the mixture and placing them in the intervals, so that in eachinterval there were two kinds of means, the one exceeding and exceededby equal parts of its extremes [as for example 1, 4/3, 2, in which themean 4/3 is one-third of 1 more than 1, and one-third of 2 less than2], the other being that kind of mean which exceeds and is exceeded byan equal number. Where there were intervals of 3/2 and of 4/3 and of9/8, made by the connecting terms in the former intervals, he filledup all the intervals of 4/3 with the interval of 9/8, leaving afraction over; and the interval which this fraction expressed was inthe ratio of 256 to 243. And thus the whole mixture out of which hecut these portions was all exhausted by him. This entire compound hedivided lengthways into two parts, which he joined to one another atthe centre like the letter X, and bent them into a circular form,connecting them with themselves and each other at the point oppositeto their original meeting-point; and, comprehending them in auniform revolution upon the same axis, he made the one the outer andthe other the inner circle. Now the motion of the outer circle hecalled the motion of the same, and the motion of the inner circlethe motion of the other or diverse. The motion of the same hecarried round by the side to the right, and the motion of thediverse diagonally to the left. And he gave dominion to the motionof the same and like, for that he left single and undivided; but theinner motion he divided in six places and made seven unequal circleshaving their intervals in ratios of two-and three, three of each,and bade the orbits proceed in a direction opposite to one another;and three [Sun, Mercury, Venus] he made to move with equalswiftness, and the remaining four [Moon, Saturn, Mars, Jupiter] tomove with unequal swiftness to the three and to one another, but indue proportion.

Now when the Creator had framed the soul according to his will, heformed within her the corporeal universe, and brought the twotogether, and united them centre to centre. The soul, interfusedeverywhere from the centre to the circumference of heaven, of whichalso she is the external envelopment, herself turning in herself,began a divine beginning of never ceasing and rational life enduringthroughout all time. The body of heaven is visible, but the soul isinvisible, and partakes of reason and harmony, and being made by thebest of intellectual and everlasting natures, is the best of thingscreated. And because she is composed of the same and of the otherand of the essence, these three, and is divided and united in dueproportion, and in her revolutions returns upon herself, the soul,when touching anything which has essence, whether dispersed in partsor undivided, is stirred through all her powers, to declare thesameness or difference of that thing and some other; and to whatindividuals are related, and by what affected, and in what way and howand when, both in the world of generation and in the world ofimmutable being. And when reason, which works with equal truth,whether she be in the circle of the diverse or of the same-invoiceless silence holding her onward course in the sphere of theself-moved-when reason, I say, is hovering around the sensible worldand when the circle of the diverse also moving truly imparts theintimations of sense to the whole soul, then arise opinions andbeliefs sure and certain. But when reason is concerned with therational, and the circle of the same moving smoothly declares it, thenintelligence and knowledge are necessarily perfected. And if any oneaffirms that in which these two are found to be other than the soul,he will say the very opposite of the truth.

When the father creator saw the creature which he had made movingand living, the created image of the eternal gods, he rejoiced, and inhis joy determined to make the copy still more like the original;and as this was eternal, he sought to make the universe eternal, sofar as might be. Now the nature of the ideal being was everlasting,but to bestow this attribute in its fulness upon a creature wasimpossible. Wherefore he resolved to have a moving image ofeternity, and when he set in order the heaven, he made this imageeternal but moving according to number, while eternity itself rests inunity; and this image we call time. For there were no days andnights and months and years before the heaven was created, but when heconstructed the heaven he created them also. They are all parts oftime, and the past and future are created species of time, which weunconsciously but wrongly transfer to the eternal essence; for wesay that he "was," he "is," he "will be," but the truth is that "is"alone is properly attributed to him, and that "was" and "will be" onlyto be spoken of becoming in time, for they are motions, but that whichis immovably the same cannot become older or younger by time, nor everdid or has become, or hereafter will be, older or younger, nor issubject at all to any of those states which affect moving and sensiblethings and of which generation is the cause. These are the forms oftime, which imitates eternity and revolves according to a law ofnumber. Moreover, when we say that what has become is become andwhat becomes is becoming, and that what will become is about to becomeand that the non-existent is non-existent-all these are inaccuratemodes of expression. But perhaps this whole subject will be moresuitably discussed on some other occasion.

Time, then, and the heaven came into being at the same instant inorder that, having been created together, if ever there was to be adissolution of them, they might be dissolved together. It was framedafter the pattern of the eternal nature, that it might resemble thisas far as was possible; for the pattern exists from eternity, andthe created heaven has been, and is, and will be, in all time. Suchwas the mind and thought of God in the creation of time. The sun andmoon and five other stars, which are called the planets, werecreated by him in order to distinguish and preserve the numbers oftime; and when he had made-their several bodies, he placed them in theorbits in which the circle of the other was revolving-in sevenorbits seven stars. First, there was the moon in the orbit nearest theearth, and next the sun, in the second orbit above the earth; thencame the morning star and the star sacred to Hermes, moving inorbits which have an equal swiftness with the sun, but in anopposite direction; and this is the reason why the sun and Hermesand Lucifer overtake and are overtaken by each other. To enumerate theplaces which he assigned to the other stars, and to give all thereasons why he assigned them, although a secondary matter, wouldgive more trouble than the primary. These things at some futuretime, when we are at leisure, may have the consideration which theydeserve, but not at present.

Now, when all the stars which were necessary to the creation of timehad attained a motion suitable to them,-and had become livingcreatures having bodies fastened by vital chains, and learnt theirappointed task, moving in the motion of the diverse, which isdiagonal, and passes through and is governed by the motion of thesame, they revolved, some in a larger and some in a lesser orbit-thosewhich had the lesser orbit revolving faster, and those which had thelarger more slowly. Now by reason of the motion of the same, thosewhich revolved fastest appeared to be overtaken by those which movedslower although they really overtook them; for the motion of thesame made them all turn in a spiral, and, because some went one wayand some another, that which receded most slowly from the sphere ofthe same, which was the swiftest, appeared to follow it most nearly.That there might be some visible measure of their relative swiftnessand slowness as they proceeded in their eight courses, God lighted afire, which we now call the sun, in the second from the earth of theseorbits, that it might give light to the whole of heaven, and thatthe animals, as many as nature intended, might participate innumber, learning arithmetic from the revolution of the same and thelike. Thus then, and for this reason the night and the day werecreated, being the period of the one most intelligent revolution.And the month is accomplished when the moon has completed her orbitand overtaken the sun, and the year when the sun has completed his ownorbit. Mankind, with hardly an exception, have not remarked theperiods of the other stars, and they have no name for them, and do notmeasure them against one another by the help of number, and hence theycan scarcely be said to know that their wanderings, being infinitein number and admirable for their variety, make up time. And yet thereis no difficulty in seeing that the perfect number of time fulfils theperfect year when all the eight revolutions, having their relativedegrees of swiftness, are accomplished together and attain theircompletion at the same time, measured by the rotation of the sameand equally moving. After this manner, and for these reasons, cameinto being such of the stars as in their heavenly progress receivedreversals of motion, to the end that the created heaven mightimitate the eternal nature, and be as like as possible to theperfect and intelligible animal.

Thus far and until the birth of time the created universe was madein the likeness of the original, but inasmuch as all animals werenot yet comprehended therein, it was still unlike. What remained,the creator then proceeded to fashion after the nature of the pattern.Now as in the ideal animal the mind perceives ideas or species of acertain nature and number, he thought that this created animal oughtto have species of a like nature and number. There are four such;one of them is the heavenly race of the gods; another, the race ofbirds whose way is in the air; the third, the watery species; andthe fourth, the pedestrian and land creatures. Of the heavenly anddivine, he created the greater part out of fire, that they might bethe brightest of all things and fairest to behold, and he fashionedthem after the likeness of the universe in the figure of a circle, andmade them follow the intelligent motion of the supreme, distributingthem over the whole circumference of heaven, which was to be a truecosmos or glorious world spangled with them all over. And he gave toeach of them two movements: the first, a movement on the same spotafter the same manner, whereby they ever continue to thinkconsistently the same thoughts about the same things; the second, aforward movement, in which they are controlled by the revolution ofthe same and the like; but by the other five motions they wereunaffected, in order that each of them might attain the highestperfection. And for this reason the fixed stars were created, to bedivine and eternal animals, ever-abiding and revolving after thesame manner and on the same spot; and the other stars which reversetheir motion and are subject to deviations of this kind, werecreated in the manner already described. The earth, which is ournurse, clinging around the pole which is extended through theuniverse, he framed to be the guardian and artificer of night and day,first and eldest of gods that are in the interior of heaven. Vainwould be the attempt to tell all the figures of them circling as indance, and their juxtapositions, and the return of them in theirrevolutions upon themselves, and their approximations, and to saywhich of these deities in their conjunctions meet, and which of themare in opposition, and in what order they get behind and before oneanother, and when they are severally eclipsed to our sight and againreappear, sending terrors and intimations of the future to those whocannot calculate their movements-to attempt to tell of all thiswithout a visible representation of the heavenly system would belabour in vain. Enough on this head; and now let what we have saidabout the nature of the created and visible gods have an end.

To know or tell the origin of the other divinities is beyond us, andwe must accept the traditions of the men of old time who affirmthemselves to be the offspring of the gods-that is what they say-andthey must surely have known their own ancestors. How can we doubtthe word of the children of the gods? Although they give no probableor certain proofs, still, as they declare that they are speaking ofwhat took place in their own family, we must conform to custom andbelieve them. In this manner, then, according to them, the genealogyof these gods is to be received and set forth.

Oceanus and Tethys were the children of Earth and Heaven, and fromthese sprang Phorcys and Cronos and Rhea, and all that generation; andfrom Cronos and Rhea sprang Zeus and Here, and all those who aresaid to be their brethren, and others who were the children of these.

Now, when all of them, both those who visibly appear in theirrevolutions as well as those other gods who are of a more retiringnature, had come into being, the creator of the universe addressedthem in these words: "Gods, children of gods, who are my works, and ofwhom I am the artificer and father, my creations are indissoluble,if so I will. All that is bound may be undone, but only an evilbeing would wish to undo that which is harmonious and happy.Wherefore, since ye are but creatures, ye are not altogetherimmortal and indissoluble, but ye shall certainly not be dissolved,nor be liable to the fate of death, having in my will a greater andmightier bond than those with which ye were bound at the time ofyour birth. And now listen to my instructions:-Three tribes ofmortal beings remain to be created-without them the universe will beincomplete, for it will not contain every kind of animal which itought to contain, if it is to be perfect. On the other hand, if theywere created by me and received life at my hands, they would be onan equality with the gods. In order then that they may be mortal,and that this universe may be truly universal, do ye, according toyour natures, betake yourselves to the formation of animals, imitatingthe power which was shown by me in creating you. The part of themworthy of the name immortal, which is called divine and is the guidingprinciple of those who are willing to follow justice and you-of thatdivine part I will myself sow the seed, and having made a beginning, Iwill hand the work over to you. And do ye then interweave the mortalwith the immortal, and make and beget living creatures, and givethem food, and make them to grow, and receive them again in death."

Thus he spake, and once more into the cup in which he had previouslymingled the soul of the universe he poured the remains of theelements, and mingled them in much the same manner; they were not,however, pure as before, but diluted to the second and third degree.And having made it he divided the whole mixture into souls equal innumber to the stars, and assigned each soul to a star; and havingthere placed them as in a chariot, he showed them the nature of theuniverse, and declared to them the laws of destiny, according to whichtheir first birth would be one and the same for all,-no one shouldsuffer a disadvantage at his hands; they were to be sown in theinstruments of time severally adapted to them, and to come forth themost religious of animals; and as human nature was of two kinds, thesuperior race would here after be called man. Now, when they should beimplanted in bodies by necessity, and be always gaining or losing somepart of their bodily substance, then in the first place it would benecessary that they should all have in them one and the same facultyof sensation, arising out of irresistible impressions; in the secondplace, they must have love, in which pleasure and pain mingle; alsofear and anger, and the feelings which are akin or opposite to them;if they conquered these they would live righteously, and if theywere conquered by them, unrighteously. He who lived well during hisappointed time was to return and dwell in his native star, and therehe would have a blessed and congenial existence. But if he failed inattaining this, at the second birth he would pass into a woman, andif, when in that state of being, he did not desist from evil, he wouldcontinually be changed into some brute who resembled him in the evilnature which he had acquired, and would not cease from his toils andtransformations until he followed the revolution of the same and thelike within him, and overcame by the help of reason the turbulentand irrational mob of later accretions, made up of fire and air andwater and earth, and returned to the form of his first and betterstate. Having given all these laws to his creatures, that he mightbe guiltless of future evil in any of them, the creator sowed someof them in the earth, and some in the moon, and some in the otherinstruments of time; and when he had sown them he committed to theyounger gods the fashioning of their mortal bodies, and desired themto furnish what was still lacking to the human soul, and having madeall the suitable additions, to rule over them, and to pilot the mortalanimal in the best and wisest manner which they could, and avertfrom him all but self-inflicted evils.

When the creator had made all these ordinances he remained in hisown accustomed nature, and his children heard and were obedient totheir father's word, and receiving from him the immortal principleof a mortal creature, in imitation of their own creator theyborrowed portions of fire, and earth, and water, and air from theworld, which were hereafter to be restored-these they took andwelded them together, not with the indissoluble chains by which theywere themselves bound, but with little pegs too small to be visible,making up out of all the four elements each separate body, andfastening the courses of the immortal soul in a body which was in astate of perpetual influx and efflux. Now these courses, detained asin a vast river, neither overcame nor were overcome; but were hurryingand hurried to and fro, so that the whole animal was moved andprogressed, irregularly however and irrationally and anyhow, in allthe six directions of motion, wandering backwards and forwards, andright and left, and up and down, and in all the six directions. Forgreat as was the advancing and retiring flood which providednourishment, the affections produced by external contact causedstill greater tumult-when the body of any one met and came intocollision with some external fire, or with the solid earth or thegliding waters, or was caught in the tempest borne on the air, and themotions produced by any of these impulses were carried through thebody to the soul. All such motions have consequently received thegeneral name of "sensations," which they still retain. And they did infact at that time create a very great and mighty movement; unitingwith the ever flowing stream in stirring up and violently shakingthe courses of the soul, they completely stopped the revolution of thesame by their opposing current, and hindered it from predominating andadvancing; and they so disturbed the nature of the other or diverse,that the three double intervals [i.e. between 1, 2, 4, 8], and thethree triple intervals [i.e. between 1, 3, 9, 27], together with themean terms and connecting links which are expressed by the ratios of 3: 2, and 4 : 3, and of 9 : 8-these, although they cannot be whollyundone except by him who united them, were twisted by them in allsorts of ways, and the circles were broken and disordered in everypossible manner, so that when they moved they were tumbling to pieces,and moved irrationally, at one time in a reverse direction, and thenagain obliquely, and then upside down, as you might imagine a personwho is upside down and has his head leaning upon the ground and hisfeet up against something in the air; and when he is in such aposition, both he and the spectator fancy that the right of eitheris his left, and left right. If, when powerfully experiencing theseand similar effects, the revolutions of the soul come in contactwith some external thing, either of the class of the same or of theother, they speak of the same or of the other in a manner the veryopposite of the truth; and they become false and foolish, and there isno course or revolution in them which has a guiding or directingpower; and if again any sensations enter in violently from without anddrag after them the whole vessel of the soul, then the courses ofthe soul, though they seem to conquer, are really conquered.

And by reason of all these affections, the soul, when encased in amortal body, now, as in the beginning, is at first withoutintelligence; but when the flood of growth and nutriment abates, andthe courses of the soul, calming down, go their own way and becomesteadier as time goes on, then the several circles return to theirnatural form, and their revolutions are corrected, and they call thesame and the other by their right names, and make the possessor ofthem to become a rational being. And if these combine in him withany true nurture or education, he attains the fulness and health ofthe perfect man, and escapes the worst disease of all; but if heneglects education he walks lame to the end of his life, and returnsimperfect and good for nothing to the world below. This, however, is alater stage; at present we must treat more exactly the subjectbefore us, which involves a preliminary enquiry into the generation ofthe body and its members, and as to how the soul was created-forwhat reason and by what providence of the gods; and holding fast toprobability, we must pursue our way.

First, then, the gods, imitating the spherical shape of theuniverse, enclosed the two divine courses in a spherical body, that,namely, which we now term the head, being the most divine part of usand the lord of all that is in us: to this the gods, when they puttogether the body, gave all the other members to be servants,considering that it partook of every sort of motion. In order thenthat it might not tumble about among the high and deep places of theearth, but might be able to get over the one and out of the other,they provided the body to be its vehicle and means of locomotion;which consequently had length and was furnished with four limbsextended and flexible; these God contrived to be instruments oflocomotion with which it might take hold and find support, and so beable to pass through all places, carrying on high the dwelling-placeof the most sacred and divine part of us. Such was the origin oflegs and hands, which for this reason were attached to every man;and the gods, deeming the front part of man to be more honourableand more fit to command than the hinder part, made us to move mostlyin a forward direction. Wherefore man must needs have his front partunlike and distinguished from the rest of his body.

And so in the vessel of the head, they first of all put a face inwhich they inserted organs to minister in all things to the providenceof the soul, and they appointed this part, which has authority, tobe by nature the part which is in front. And of the organs theyfirst contrived the eyes to give light, and the principle according towhich they were inserted was as follows: So much of fire as wouldnot burn, but gave a gentle light, they formed into a substance akinto the light of every-day life; and the pure fire which is within usand related thereto they made to flow through the eyes in a streamsmooth and dense, compressing the whole eye, and especially the centrepart, so that it kept out everything of a coarser nature, andallowed to pass only this pure element. When the light of daysurrounds the stream of vision, then like falls upon like, and theycoalesce, and one body is formed by natural affinity in the line ofvision, wherever the light that falls from within meets with anexternal object. And the whole stream of vision, being similarlyaffected in virtue of similarity, diffuses the motions of what ittouches or what touches it over the whole body, until they reach thesoul, causing that perception which we call sight. But when nightcomes on and the external and kindred fire departs, then the stream ofvision is cut off; for going forth to an unlike element it ischanged and extinguished, being no longer of one nature with thesurrounding atmosphere which is now deprived of fire: and so the eyeno longer sees, and we feel disposed to sleep. For when the eyelids,which the gods invented for the preservation of sight, are closed,they keep in the internal fire; and the power of the fire diffuses andequalises the inward motions; when they are equalised, there isrest, and when the rest is profound, sleep comes over us scarcedisturbed by dreams; but where the greater motions still remain, ofwhatever nature and in whatever locality, they engendercorresponding visions in dreams, which are remembered by us when weare awake and in the external world. And now there is no longer anydifficulty in understanding the creation of images in mirrors andall smooth and bright surfaces. For from the communion of the internaland external fires, and again from the union of them and theirnumerous transformations when they meet in the mirror, all theseappearances of necessity arise, when the fire from the facecoalesces with the fire from the eye on the bright and smooth surface.And right appears left and left right, because the visual rays comeinto contact with the rays emitted by the object in a mannercontrary to the usual mode of meeting; but the right appears right,and the left left, when the position of one of the two concurringlights is reversed; and this happens when the mirror is concave andits smooth surface repels the right stream of vision to the left side,and the left to the right. Or if the mirror be turned vertically, thenthe concavity makes the countenance appear to be all upside down,and the lower rays are driven upwards and the upper downwards.

All these are to be reckoned among the second and co-operativecauses which God, carrying into execution the idea of the best asfar as possible, uses as his ministers. They are thought by most mennot to be the second, but the prime causes of all things, because theyfreeze and heat, and contract and dilate, and the like. But they arenot so, for they are incapable of reason or intellect; the onlybeing which can properly have mind is the invisible soul, whereas fireand water, and earth and air, are all of them visible bodies. Thelover of intellect and knowledge ought to explore causes ofintelligent nature first of all, and, secondly, of those things which,being moved by others, are compelled to move others. And this iswhat we too must do. Both kinds of causes should be acknowledged byus, but a distinction should be made between those which are endowedwith mind and are the workers of things fair and good, and those whichare deprived of intelligence and always produce chance effects withoutorder or design. Of the second or co-operative causes of sight,which help to give to the eyes the power which they now possess,enough has been said. I will therefore now proceed to speak of thehigher use and purpose for which God has given them to us. The sightin my opinion is the source of the greatest benefit to us, for hadwe never seen the stars, and the sun, and the heaven, none of thewords which we have spoken about the universe would ever have beenuttered. But now the sight of day and night, and the months and therevolutions of the years, have created number, and have given us aconception of time, and the power of enquiring about the nature of theuniverse; and from this source we have derived philosophy, thanwhich no greater good ever was or will be given by the gods tomortal man. This is the greatest boon of sight: and of the lesserbenefits why should I speak? even the ordinary man if he were deprivedof them would bewail his loss, but in vain. Thus much let me sayhowever: God invented and gave us sight to the end that we mightbehold the courses of intelligence in the heaven, and apply them tothe courses of our own intelligence which are akin to them, theunperturbed to the perturbed; and that we, learning them and partakingof the natural truth of reason, might imitate the absolutelyunerring courses of God and regulate our own vagaries. The same may beaffirmed of speech and hearing: they have been given by the gods tothe same end and for a like reason. For this is the principal end ofspeech, whereto it most contributes. Moreover, so much of music asis adapted to the sound of the voice and to the sense of hearing isgranted to us for the sake of harmony; and harmony, which hasmotions akin to the revolutions of our souls, is not regarded by theintelligent votary of the Muses as given by them with a view toirrational pleasure, which is deemed to be the purpose of it in ourday, but as meant to correct any discord which may have arisen inthe courses of the soul, and to be our ally in bringing her intoharmony and agreement with herself; and rhythm too was given by themfor the same reason, on account of the irregular and graceless wayswhich prevail among mankind generally, and to help us against them.

Thus far in what we have been saying, with small exception, theworks of intelligence have been set forth; and now we must place bythe side of them in our discourse the things which come into beingthrough necessity-for the creation is mixed, being made up ofnecessity and mind. Mind, the ruling power, persuaded necessity tobring the greater part of created things to perfection, and thus andafter this manner in the beginning, when the influence of reason gotthe better of necessity, the universe was created. But if a personwill truly tell of the way in which the work was accomplished, he mustinclude the other influence of the variable cause as well.Wherefore, we must return again and find another suitable beginning,as about the former matters, so also about these. To which end we mustconsider the nature of fire, and water, and air, and earth, such asthey were prior to the creation of the heaven, and what washappening to them in this previous state; for no one has as yetexplained the manner of their generation, but we speak of fire and therest of them, whatever they mean, as though men knew their natures,and we maintain them to be the first principles and letters orelements of the whole, when they cannot reasonably be compared by aman of any sense even to syllables or first compounds. And let mesay thus much: I will not now speak of the first principle orprinciples of all things, or by whatever name they are to be called,for this reason-because it is difficult to set forth my opinionaccording to the method of discussion which we are at presentemploying. Do not imagine, any more than I can bring myself toimagine, that I should be right in undertaking so great anddifficult a task. Remembering what I said at first aboutprobability, I will do my best to give as probable an explanation asany other-or rather, more probable; and I will first go back to thebeginning and try to speak of each thing and of all. Once more,then, at the commencement of my discourse, I call upon God, and beghim to be our saviour out of a strange and unwonted enquiry, and tobring us to the haven of probability. So now let us begin again.

This new beginning of our discussion of the universe requires afuller division than the former; for then we made two classes, now athird must be revealed. The two sufficed for the former discussion:one, which we assumed, was a pattern intelligible and always the same;and the second was only the imitation of the pattern, generated andvisible. There is also a third kind which we did not distinguish atthe time, conceiving that the two would be enough. But now theargument seems to require that we should set forth in words anotherkind, which is difficult of explanation and dimly seen. What natureare we to attribute to this new kind of being? We reply, that it isthe receptacle, and in a manner the nurse, of all generation. I havespoken the truth; but I must express myself in clearer language, andthis will be an arduous task for many reasons, and in particularbecause I must first raise questions concerning fire and the otherelements, and determine what each of them is; for to say, with anyprobability or certitude, which of them should be called waterrather than fire, and which should be called any of them rather thanall or some one of them, is a difficult matter. How, then, shall wesettle this point, and what questions about the elements may be fairlyraised?

In the first place, we see that what we just now called water, bycondensation, I suppose, becomes stone and earth; and this sameelement, when melted and dispersed, passes into vapour and air. Air,again, when inflamed, becomes fire; and again fire, when condensed andextinguished, passes once more into the form of air; and once more,air, when collected and condensed, produces cloud and mist; and fromthese, when still more compressed, comes flowing water, and from watercomes earth and stones once more; and thus generation appears to betransmitted from one to the other in a circle. Thus, then, as theseveral elements never present themselves in the same form, how canany one have the assurance to assert positively that any of them,whatever it may be, is one thing rather than another? No one can.But much the safest plan is to speak of them as follows:-Anythingwhich we see to be continually changing, as, for example, fire, wemust not call "this" or "that," but rather say that it is "of such anature"; nor let us speak of water as "this"; but always as "such";nor must we imply that there is any stability in any of those thingswhich we indicate by the use of the words "this" and "that," supposingourselves to signify something thereby; for they are too volatile tobe detained in any such expressions as "this," or "that," or "relativeto this," or any other mode of speaking which represents them aspermanent. We ought not to apply "this" to any of them, but rather theword "such"; which expresses the similar principle circulating in eachand all of them; for example, that should be called "fire" which is ofsuch a nature always, and so of everything that has generation. Thatin which the elements severally grow up, and appear, and decay, isalone to be called by the name "this" or "that"; but that which isof a certain nature, hot or white, or anything which admits ofopposite equalities, and all things that are compounded of them, oughtnot to be so denominated. Let me make another attempt to explain mymeaning more clearly. Suppose a person to make all kinds of figures ofgold and to be always transmuting one form into all therest-somebody points to one of them and asks what it is. By far thesafest and truest answer is, That is gold; and not to call thetriangle or any other figures which are formed in the gold "these," asthough they had existence, since they are in process of change whilehe is making the assertion; but if the questioner be willing to takethe safe and indefinite expression, "such," we should be satisfied.And the same argument applies to the universal nature which receivesall bodies-that must be always called the same; for, while receivingall things, she never departs at all from her own nature, and never inany way, or at any time, assumes a form like that of any of the thingswhich enter into her; she is the natural recipient of all impressions,and is stirred and informed by them, and appears different from timeto time by reason of them. But the forms which enter into and go outof her are the likenesses of real existences modelled after theirpatterns in wonderful and inexplicable manner, which we will hereafterinvestigate. For the present we have only to conceive of threenatures: first, that which is in process of generation; secondly, thatin which the generation takes place; and thirdly, that of which thething generated is a resemblance. And we may liken the receivingprinciple to a mother, and the source or spring to a father, and theintermediate nature to a child; and may remark further, that if themodel is to take every variety of form, then the matter in which themodel is fashioned will not be duly prepared, unless it is formless,and free from the impress of any of these shapes which it is hereafterto receive from without. For if the matter were like any of thesupervening forms, then whenever any opposite or entirely differentnature was stamped upon its surface, it would take the impressionbadly, because it would intrude its own shape. Wherefore, that whichis to receive all forms should have no form; as in making perfumesthey first contrive that the liquid substance which is to receivethe scent shall be as inodorous as possible; or as those who wish toimpress figures on soft substances do not allow any previousimpression to remain, but begin by making the surface as even andsmooth as possible. In the same way that which is to receiveperpetually and through its whole extent the resemblances of alleternal beings ought to be devoid of any particular form. Wherefore,the mother and receptacle of all created and visible and in any waysensible things, is not to be termed earth, or air, or fire, or water,or any of their compounds or any of the elements from which theseare derived, but is an invisible and formless being which receives allthings and in some mysterious way partakes of the intelligible, and ismost incomprehensible. In saying this we shall not be far wrong; asfar, however, as we can attain to a knowledge of her from the previousconsiderations, we may truly say that fire is that part of hernature which from time to time is inflamed, and water that which ismoistened, and that the mother substance becomes earth and air, inso far as she receives the impressions of them.

Let us consider this question more precisely. Is there anyself-existent fire? and do all those things which we callself-existent exist? or are only those things which we see, or in someway perceive through the bodily organs, truly existent, and nothingwhatever besides them? And is all that which, we call anintelligible essence nothing at all, and only a name? Here is aquestion which we must not leave unexamined or undetermined, normust we affirm too confidently that there can be no decision;neither must we interpolate in our present long discourse a digressionequally long, but if it is possible to set forth a great principlein a few words, that is just what we want.

Thus I state my view:-If mind and true opinion are two distinctclasses, then I say that there certainly are these self-existent ideasunperceived by sense, and apprehended only by the mind; if, however,as some say, true opinion differs in no respect from mind, theneverything that we perceive through the body is to be regarded as mostreal and certain. But we must affirm that to be distinct, for theyhave a distinct origin and are of a different nature; the one isimplanted in us by instruction, the other by persuasion; the one isalways accompanied by true reason, the other is without reason; theone cannot be overcome by persuasion, but the other can: and lastly,every man may be said to share in true opinion, but mind is theattribute of the gods and of very few men. Wherefore also we mustacknowledge that there is one kind of being which is always thesame, uncreated and indestructible, never receiving anything intoitself from without, nor itself going out to any other, butinvisible and imperceptible by any sense, and of which thecontemplation is granted to intelligence only. And there is anothernature of the same name with it, and like to it, perceived by sense,created, always in motion, becoming in place and again vanishing outof place, which is apprehended by opinion and sense. And there is athird nature, which is space, and is eternal, and admits not ofdestruction and provides a home for all created things, and isapprehended without the help of sense, by a kind of spurious reason,and is hardly real; which we beholding as in a dream, say of allexistence that it must of necessity be in some place and occupy aspace, but that what is neither in heaven nor in earth has noexistence. Of these and other things of the same kind, relating to thetrue and waking reality of nature, we have only this dreamlikesense, and we are unable to cast off sleep and determine the truthabout them. For an image, since the reality, after which it ismodelled, does not belong to it, and it exists ever as the fleetingshadow of some other, must be inferred to be in another [i.e. in space], grasping existence in some way or other, or it could not be at all.But true and exact reason, vindicating the nature of true being,maintains that while two things [i.e. the image and space] aredifferent they cannot exist one of them in the other and so be one andalso two at the same time.

Thus have I concisely given the result of my thoughts; and myverdict is that being and space and generation, these three, existedin their three ways before the heaven; and that the nurse ofgeneration, moistened by water and inflamed by fire, and receiving theforms of earth and air, and experiencing all the affections whichaccompany these, presented a strange variety of appearances; and beingfull of powers which were neither similar nor equally balanced, wasnever in any part in a state of equipoise, but swaying unevenly hitherand thither, was shaken by them, and by its motion again shook them;and the elements when moved were separated and carried continually,some one way, some another; as, when rain is shaken and winnowed byfans and other instruments used in the threshing of corn, the closeand heavy particles are borne away and settle in one direction, andthe loose and light particles in another. In this manner, the fourkinds or elements were then shaken by the receiving vessel, which,moving like a winnowing machine, scattered far away from one anotherthe elements most unlike, and forced the most similar elements intodose contact. Wherefore also the various elements had different placesbefore they were arranged so as to form the universe. At first, theywere all without reason and measure. But when the world began to getinto order, fire and water and earth and air had only certain fainttraces of themselves, and were altogether such as everything mightbe expected to be in the absence of God; this, I say, was their natureat that time, and God fashioned them by form and number. Let it beconsistently maintained by us in all that we say that God made them asfar as possible the fairest and best, out of things which were notfair and good. And now I will endeavour to show you the dispositionand generation of them by an unaccustomed argument, which am compelledto use; but I believe that you will be able to follow me, for youreducation has made you familiar with the methods of science.

In the first place, then, as is evident to all, fire and earth andwater and air are bodies. And every sort of body possesses solidity,and every solid must necessarily be contained in planes; and everyplane rectilinear figure is composed of triangles; and all trianglesare originally of two kinds, both of which are made up of one rightand two acute angles; one of them has at either end of the base thehalf of a divided right angle, having equal sides, while in theother the right angle is divided into unequal parts, having unequalsides. These, then, proceeding by a combination of probability withdemonstration, we assume to be the original elements of fire and theother bodies; but the principles which are prior to these God onlyknows, and he of men who is the friend God. And next we have todetermine what are the four most beautiful bodies which are unlike oneanother, and of which some are capable of resolution into one another;for having discovered thus much, we shall know the true origin ofearth and fire and of the proportionate and intermediate elements. Andthen we shall not be willing to allow that there are any distinctkinds of visible bodies fairer than these. Wherefore we must endeavourto construct the four forms of bodies which excel in beauty, andthen we shall be able to say that we have sufficiently apprehendedtheir nature. Now of the two triangles, the isosceles has one formonly; the scalene or unequal-sided has an infinite number. Of theinfinite forms we must select the most beautiful, if we are to proceedin due order, and any one who can point out a more beautiful form thanours for the construction of these bodies, shall carry off the palm,not as an enemy, but as a friend. Now, the one which we maintain to bethe most beautiful of all the many triangles (and we need not speak ofthe others) is that of which the double forms a third triangle whichis equilateral; the reason of this would be long to tell; he whodisproves what we are saying, and shows that we are mistaken, mayclaim a friendly victory. Then let us choose two triangles, out ofwhich fire and the other elements have been constructed, oneisosceles, the other having the square of the longer side equal tothree times the square of the lesser side.

Now is the time to explain what was before obscurely said: there wasan error in imagining that all the four elements might be generated byand into one another; this, I say, was an erroneous supposition, forthere are generated from the triangles which we have selected fourkinds-three from the one which has the sides unequal; the fourth aloneis framed out of the isosceles triangle. Hence they cannot all beresolved into one another, a great number of small bodies beingcombined into a few large ones, or the converse. But three of them canbe thus resolved and compounded, for they all spring from one, andwhen the greater bodies are broken up, many small bodies will springup out of them and take their own proper figures; or, again, when manysmall bodies are dissolved into their triangles, if they become one,they will form one large mass of another kind. So much for theirpassage into one another. I have now to speak of their severalkinds, and show out of what combinations of numbers each of them wasformed. The first will be the simplest and smallest construction,and its element is that triangle which has its hypotenuse twice thelesser side. When two such triangles are joined at the diagonal, andthis is repeated three times, and the triangles rest their diagonalsand shorter sides on the same point as a centre, a singleequilateral triangle is formed out of six triangles; and fourequilateral triangles, if put together, make out of every threeplane angles one solid angle, being that which is nearest to themost obtuse of plane angles; and out of the combination of thesefour angles arises the first solid form which distributes into equaland similar parts the whole circle in which it is inscribed. Thesecond species of solid is formed out of the same triangles, whichunite as eight equilateral triangles and form one solid angle out offour plane angles, and out of six such angles the second body iscompleted. And the third body is made up of 120 triangular elements,forming twelve solid angles, each of them included in five planeequilateral triangles, having altogether twenty bases, each of whichis an equilateral triangle. The one element [that is, the trianglewhich has its hypotenuse twice the lesser side] having generated thesefigures, generated no more; but the isosceles triangle produced thefourth elementary figure, which is compounded of four suchtriangles, joining their right angles in a centre, and forming oneequilateral quadrangle. Six of these united form eight solid angles,each of which is made by the combination of three plane rightangles; the figure of the body thus composed is a cube, having sixplane quadrangular equilateral bases. There was yet a fifthcombination which God used in the delineation of the universe.

Now, he who, duly reflecting on all this, enquires whether theworlds are to be regarded as indefinite or definite in number, will beof opinion that the notion of their indefiniteness is characteristicof a sadly indefinite and ignorant mind. He, however, who raises thequestion whether they are to be truly regarded as one or five, takesup a more reasonable position. Arguing from probabilities, I am ofopinion that they are one; another, regarding the question fromanother point of view, will be of another mind. But, leaving thisenquiry, let us proceed to distribute the elementary forms, which havenow been created in idea, among the four elements.

To earth, then, let us assign the cubical form; for earth is themost immoveable of the four and the most plastic of all bodies, andthat which has the most stable bases must of necessity be of such anature. Now, of the triangles which we assumed at first, that whichhas two equal sides is by nature more firmly based than that which hasunequal sides; and of the compound figures which are formed out ofeither, the plane equilateral quadrangle has necessarily, a morestable basis than the equilateral triangle, both in the whole and inthe parts. Wherefore, in assigning this figure to earth, we adhereto probability; and to water we assign that one of the remaining formswhich is the least moveable; and the most moveable of them to fire;and to air that which is intermediate. Also we assign the smallestbody to fire, and the greatest to water, and the intermediate insize to air; and, again, the acutest body to fire, and the next inacuteness to, air, and the third to water. Of all these elements, thatwhich has the fewest bases must necessarily be the most moveable,for it must be the acutest and most penetrating in every way, and alsothe lightest as being composed of the smallest number of similarparticles: and the second body has similar properties in a seconddegree, and the third body in the third degree. Let it be agreed,then, both according to strict reason and according to probability,that the pyramid is the solid which is the original element and seedof fire; and let us assign the element which was next in the orderof generation to air, and the third to water. We must imagine allthese to be so small that no single particle of any of the fourkinds is seen by us on account of their smallness: but when many ofthem are collected together their aggregates are seen. And theratios of their numbers, motions, and other properties, everywhereGod, as far as necessity allowed or gave consent, has exactlyperfected, and harmonised in due proportion.

From all that we have just been saying about the elements orkinds, the most probable conclusion is as follows:-earth, when meetingwith fire and dissolved by its sharpness, whether the dissolution takeplace in the fire itself or perhaps in some mass of air or water, isborne hither and thither, until its parts, meeting together andmutually harmonising, again become earth; for they can never takeany other form. But water, when divided by fire or by air, onreforming, may become one part fire and two parts air; and a singlevolume of air divided becomes two of fire. Again, when a small body offire is contained in a larger body of air or water or earth, andboth are moving, and the fire struggling is overcome and broken up,then two volumes of fire form one volume of air; and when air isovercome and cut up into small pieces, two and a half parts of air arecondensed into one part of water. Let us consider the matter inanother way. When one of the other elements is fastened upon byfire, and is cut by the sharpness of its angles and sides, itcoalesces with the fire, and then ceases to be cut by them any longer.For no element which is one and the same with itself can be changed byor change another of the same kind and in the same state. But solong as in the process of transition the weaker is fighting againstthe stronger, the dissolution continues. Again, when a few smallparticles, enclosed in many larger ones, are in process ofdecomposition and extinction, they only cease from their tendency toextinction when they consent to pass into the conquering nature, andfire becomes air and air water. But if bodies of another kind go andattack them [i.e. the small particles], the latter continue to bedissolved until, being completely forced back and dispersed, they maketheir escape to their own kindred, or else, being overcome andassimilated to the conquering power, they remain where they are anddwell with their victors, and from being many become one. And owing tothese affections, all things are changing their place, for by themotion of the receiving vessel the bulk of each class is distributedinto its proper place; but those things which become unlike themselvesand like other things, are hurried by the shaking into the place ofthe things to which they grow like.

Now all unmixed and primary bodies are produced by such causes asthese. As to the subordinate species which are included in the greaterkinds, they are to be attributed to the varieties in the structureof the two original triangles. For either structure did not originallyproduce the triangle of one size only, but some larger and somesmaller, and there are as many sizes as there are species of thefour elements. Hence when they are mingled with themselves and withone another there is an endless variety of them, which those who wouldarrive at the probable truth of nature ought duly to consider.

Unless a person comes to an understanding about the nature andconditions of rest and motion, he will meet with many difficultiesin the discussion which follows. Something has been said of thismatter already, and something more remains to be said, which is,that motion never exists in what is uniform. For to conceive thatanything can be moved without a mover is hard or indeed impossible,and equally impossible to conceive that there can be a mover unlessthere be something which can be moved-motion cannot exist where eitherof these are wanting, and for these to be uniform is impossible;wherefore we must assign rest to uniformity and motion to the wantof uniformity. Now inequality is the cause of the nature which iswanting in uniformity; and of this we have already described theorigin. But there still remains the further point-why things whendivided after their kinds do not cease to pass through one another andto change their place-which we will now proceed to explain. In therevolution of the universe are comprehended all the four elements, andthis being circular and having a tendency to come together, compresseseverything and will not allow any place to be left void. Wherefore,also, fire above all things penetrates everywhere, and air next, asbeing next in rarity of the elements; and the two other elements inlike manner penetrate according to their degrees of rarity. Forthose things which are composed of the largest particles have thelargest void left in their compositions, and those which arecomposed of the smallest particles have the least. And the contractioncaused by the compression thrusts the smaller particles into theinterstices of the larger. And thus, when the small parts are placedside by side with the larger, and the lesser divide the greater andthe greater unite the lesser, all the elements are borne up and downand hither and thither towards their own places; for the change in thesize of each changes its position in space. And these causesgenerate an inequality which is always maintained, and iscontinually creating a perpetual motion of the elements in all time.

In the next place we have to consider that there are divers kinds offire. There are, for example, first, flame; and secondly, thoseemanations of flame which do not burn but only give light to the eyes;thirdly, the remains of fire, which are seen in red-hot embers afterthe flame has been extinguished. There are similar differences inthe air; of which the brightest part is called the aether, and themost turbid sort mist and darkness; and there are various othernameless kinds which arise from the inequality of the triangles.Water, again, admits in the first place of a division into twokinds; the one liquid and the other fusile. The liquid kind iscomposed of the small and unequal particles of water; and moves itselfand is moved by other bodies owing to the want of uniformity and theshape of its particles; whereas the fusile kind, being formed of largeand uniform particles, is more stable than the other, and is heavy andcompact by reason of its uniformity. But when fire gets in anddissolves the particles and destroys the uniformity, it has greatermobility, and becoming fluid is thrust forth by the neighbouring airand spreads upon the earth; and this dissolution of the solid massesis called melting, and their spreading out upon the earth flowing.Again, when the fire goes out of the fusile substance, it does notpass into vacuum, but into the neighbouring air; and the air whichis displaced forces together the liquid and still moveable mass intothe place which was occupied by the fire, and unites it with itself.Thus compressed the mass resumes its equability, and is again at unitywith itself, because the fire which was the author of the inequalityhas retreated; and this departure of the fire is called cooling, andthe coming together which follows upon it is termed congealment. Ofall the kinds termed fusile, that which is the densest and is formedout of the finest and most uniform parts is that most preciouspossession called gold, which is hardened by filtration throughrock; this is unique in kind, and has both a glittering and a yellowcolour. A shoot of gold, which is so dense as to be very hard, andtakes a black colour, is termed adamant. There is also another kindwhich has parts nearly like gold, and of which there are severalspecies; it is denser than gold, and it contains a small and fineportion of earth, and is therefore harder, yet also lighter because ofthe great interstices which it has within itself; and thissubstance, which is one of the bright and denser kinds of water,when solidified is called copper. There is an alloy of earth mingledwith it, which, when the two parts grow old and are disunited, showsitself separately and is called rust. The remaining phenomena of thesame kind there will be no difficulty in reasoning out by the methodof probabilities. A man may sometimes set aside meditations abouteternal things, and for recreation turn to consider the truths ofgeneration which are probable only; he will thus gain a pleasure notto be repented of, and secure for himself while he lives a wise andmoderate pastime. Let us grant ourselves this indulgence, and gothrough the probabilities relating to the same subjects which follownext in order.

Water which is mingled with fire, so much as is fine and liquid(being so called by reason of its motion and the way in which it rollsalong the ground), and soft, because its bases give way are lessstable than those of earth, when separated from fire and air andisolated, becomes more uniform, and by their retirement iscompressed into itself; and if the condensation be very great, thewater above the earth becomes hail, but on the earth, ice; and thatwhich is congealed in a less degree and is only half solid, when abovethe earth is called snow, and when upon the earth, and condensedfrom dew, hoarfrost. Then, again, there are the numerous kinds ofwater which have been mingled with one another, and are distilledthrough plants which grow in the earth; and this whole class is calledby the name of juices or saps. The unequal admixture of these fluidscreates a variety of species; most of them are nameless, but fourwhich are of a fiery nature are clearly distinguished and havenames. First there is wine, which warms the soul as well as thebody: secondly, there is the oily nature, which is smooth anddivides the visual ray, and for this reason is bright and shiningand of a glistening appearance, including pitch, the juice of thecastor berry, oil itself, and other things of a like kind: thirdly,there is the class of substances which expand the contracted partsof the mouth, until they return to their natural state, and byreason of this property create sweetness;-these are included under thegeneral name of honey: and, lastly, there is a frothy nature, whichdiffers from all juices, having a burning quality which dissolvesthe flesh; it is called opos (a vegetable acid).

As to the kinds of earth, that which is filtered through waterpasses into stone in the following manner:-The water which mixeswith the earth and is broken up in the process changes into air, andtaking this form mounts into its own place. But as there is nosurrounding vacuum it thrusts away the neighbouring air, and thisbeing rendered heavy, and, when it is displaced, having been pouredaround the mass of earth, forcibly compresses it and drives it intothe vacant space whence the new air had come up; and the earth whencompressed by the air into an indissoluble union with water becomesrock. The fairer sort is that which is made up of equal and similarparts and is transparent; that which has the opposite qualities isinferior. But when all the watery part is suddenly drawn out byfire, a more brittle substance is formed, to which we give the name ofpottery. Sometimes also moisture may remain, and the earth which hasbeen fused by fire becomes, when cool, a certain stone of a blackcolour. A like separation of the water which had been copiouslymingled with them may occur in two substances composed of finerparticles of earth and of a briny nature; out of either of them a halfsolid body is then formed, soluble in water-the one, soda, which isused for purging away oil and earth, and other, salt, which harmonizesso well in combinations pleasing to the palate, and is, as the lawtestifies, a substance dear to the gods. The compounds of earth andwater are not soluble by water, but by fire only, and for thisreason:-Neither fire nor air melt masses of earth; for theirparticles, being smaller than the interstices in its structure, haveplenty of room to move without forcing their way, and so they leavethe earth unmelted and undissolved; but particles of water, whichare larger, force a passage, and dissolve and melt the earth.Wherefore earth when not consolidated by force is dissolved by wateronly; when consolidated, by nothing but fire; for this is the onlybody which can find an entrance. The cohesion of water again, whenvery strong, is dissolved by fire only-when weaker, then either by airor fire-the former entering the interstices, and the latterpenetrating even the triangles. But nothing can dissolve air, whenstrongly condensed, which does not reach the elements or triangles; orif not strongly condensed, then only fire can dissolve it. As tobodies composed of earth and water, while the water occupies thevacant interstices of the earth in them which are compressed by force,the particles of water which approach them from without, finding noentrance, flow around the entire mass and leave it undissolved; butthe particles of fire, entering into the interstices of the water,do to the water what water does to earth and fire to air, and arethe sole causes of the compound body of earth and water liquefying andbecoming fluid. Now these bodies are of two kinds; some of them,such as glass and the fusible sort of stones, have less water thanthey have earth; on the other hand, substances of the nature of waxand incense have more of water entering into their composition.

I have thus shown the various classes of bodies as they arediversified by their forms and combinations and changes into oneanother, and now I must endeavour to set forth their affections andthe causes of them. In the first place, the bodies which I have beendescribing are necessarily objects of sense. But we have not yetconsidered the origin of flesh, or what belongs to flesh, or of thatpart of the soul which is mortal. And these things cannot beadequately explained without also explaining the affections whichare concerned with sensation, nor the latter without the former: andyet to explain them together is hardly possible; for which reason wemust assume first one or the other and afterwards examine the natureof our hypothesis. In order, then, that the affections may followregularly after the elements, let us presuppose the existence ofbody and soul.

First, let us enquire what we mean by saying that fire is hot; andabout this we may reason from the dividing or cutting power which itexercises on our bodies. We all of us feel that fire is sharp; andwe may further consider the fineness of the sides, and the sharpnessof the angles, and the smallness of the particles, and the swiftnessof the motion-all this makes the action of fire violent and sharp,so that it cuts whatever it meets. And we must not forget that theoriginal figure of fire [i.e. the pyramid], more than any otherform, has a dividing power which cuts our bodies into small pieces(Kepmatizei), and thus naturally produces that affection which we callheat; and hence the origin of the name (thepmos, Kepma). Now, theopposite of this is sufficiently manifest; nevertheless we will notfail to describe it. For the larger particles of moisture whichsurround the body, entering in and driving out the lesser, but notbeing able to take their places, compress the moist principle in us;and this from being unequal and disturbed, is forced by them into astate of rest, which is due to equability and compression. Butthings which are contracted contrary to nature are by nature at war,and force themselves apart; and to this war and convulsion the name ofshivering and trembling is given; and the whole affection and thecause of the affection are both termed cold. That is called hard towhich our flesh yields, and soft which yields to our flesh; and thingsare also termed hard and soft relatively to one another. That whichyields has a small base; but that which rests on quadrangular bases isfirmly posed and belongs to the class which offers the greatestresistance; so too does that which is the most compact and thereforemost repellent. The nature of the light and the heavy will be bestunderstood when examined in connexion with our notions of above andbelow; for it is quite a mistake to suppose that the universe isparted into two regions, separate from and opposite to each other, theone a lower to which all things tend which have any bulk, and an upperto which things only ascend against their will. For as the universe isin the form of a sphere, all the extremities, being equidistant fromthe centre, are equally extremities, and the centre, which isequidistant from them, is equally to be regarded as the opposite ofthem all. Such being the nature of the world, when a person saysthat any of these points is above or below, may he not be justlycharged with using an improper expression? For the centre of the worldcannot be rightly called either above or below, but is the centreand nothing else; and the circumference is not the centre, and hasin no one part of itself a different relation to the centre fromwhat it has in any of the opposite parts. Indeed, when it is inevery direction similar, how can one rightly give to it names whichimply opposition? For if there were any solid body in equipoise at thecentre of the universe, there would be nothing to draw it to thisextreme rather than to that, for they are all perfectly similar; andif a person were to go round the world in a circle, he would often,when standing at the antipodes of his former position, speak of thesame point as above and below; for, as I was saying just now, to speakof the whole which is in the form of a globe as having one partabove and another below is not like a sensible man.

The reason why these names are used, and the circumstances underwhich they are ordinarily applied by us to the division of theheavens, may be elucidated by the following supposition:-if a personwere to stand in that part of the universe which is the appointedplace of fire, and where there is the great mass of fire to whichfiery bodies gather-if, I say, he were to ascend thither, and,having the power to do this, were to abstract particles of fire andput them in scales and weigh them, and then, raising the balance, wereto draw the fire by force towards the uncongenial element of theair, it would be very evident that he could compel the smaller massmore readily than the larger; for when two things are simultaneouslyraised by one and the same power, the smaller body must necessarilyyield to the superior power with less reluctance than the larger;and the larger body is called heavy and said to tend downwards, andthe smaller body is called light and said to tend upwards. And wemay detect ourselves who are upon the earth doing precisely the samething. For we of separate earthy natures, and sometimes earthitself, and draw them into the uncongenial element of air by force andcontrary to nature, both clinging to their kindred elements. Butthat which is smaller yields to the impulse given by us towards thedissimilar element more easily than the larger; and so we call theformer light, and the place towards which it is impelled we callabove, and the contrary state and place we call heavy and belowrespectively. Now the relations of these must necessarily vary,because the principal masses of the different elements hold oppositepositions; for that which is light, heavy, below or above in one placewill be found to be and become contrary and transverse and every waydiverse in relation to that which is light, heavy, below or above inan opposite place. And about all of them this has to beconsidered:-that the tendency of each towards its kindred elementmakes the body which is moved heavy, and the place towards which themotion tends below, but things which have an opposite tendency we callby an opposite name. Such are the causes which we assign to thesephenomena. As to the smooth and the rough, any one who sees them canexplain the reason of them to another. For roughness is hardnessmingled with irregularity, and smoothness is produced by the jointeffect of uniformity and density.

The most important of the affections which concern the whole bodyremains to be considered-that is, the cause of pleasure and pain inthe perceptions of which I have been speaking, and in all other thingswhich are perceived by sense through the parts of the body, and haveboth pains and pleasures attendant on them. Let us imagine thecauses of every affection, whether of sense or not, to be of thefollowing nature, remembering that we have already distinguishedbetween the nature which is easy and which is hard to move; for thisis the direction in which we must hunt the prey which we mean to take.A body which is of a nature to be easily moved, on receiving animpression however slight, spreads abroad the motion in a circle,the parts communicating with each other, until at last, reaching theprinciple of mind, they announce the quality of the agent. But abody of the opposite kind, being immobile, and not extending to thesurrounding region, merely receives the impression, and does notstir any of the neighbouring parts; and since the parts do notdistribute the original impression to other parts, it has no effect ofmotion on the whole animal, and therefore produces no effect on thepatient. This is true of the bones and hair and other more earthyparts of the human body; whereas what was said above relates mainly tosight and hearing, because they have in them the greatest amount offire and air. Now we must conceive of pleasure and pain in this way.An impression produced in us contrary to nature and violent, ifsudden, is painful; and, again, the sudden return to nature ispleasant; but a gentle and gradual return is imperceptible and viceversa. On the other hand the impression of sense which is mosteasily produced is most readily felt, but is not accompanied byPleasure or pain; such, for example, are the affections of thesight, which, as we said above, is a body naturally uniting with ourbody in the day-time; for cuttings and burnings and otheraffections which happen to the sight do not give pain, nor is therepleasure when the sight returns to its natural state; but thesensations are dearest and strongest according to the manner inwhich the eye is affected by the object, and itself strikes andtouches it; there is no violence either in the contraction or dilationof the eye. But bodies formed of larger particles yield to the agentonly with a struggle; and then they impart their motions to thewhole and cause pleasure and pain-pain when alienated from theirnatural conditions, and pleasure when restored to them. Things whichexperience gradual withdrawings and emptyings of their nature, andgreat and sudden replenishments, fail to perceive the emptying, butare sensible of the replenishment; and so they occasion no pain, butthe greatest pleasure, to the mortal part of the soul, as ismanifest in the case of perfumes. But things which are changed all ofa sudden, and only gradually and with difficulty return to their ownnature, have effects in every way opposite to the former, as isevident in the case of burnings and cuttings of the body.

Thus have we discussed the general affections of the whole body, andthe names of the agents which produce them. And now I will endeavourto speak of the affections of particular parts, and the causes andagents of them, as far as I am able. In the first place let us setforth what was omitted when we were speaking of juices, concerning theaffections peculiar to the tongue. These too, like most of the otheraffections, appear to be caused by certain contractions and dilations,but they have besides more of roughness and smoothness than is foundin other affections; for whenever earthy particles enter into thesmall veins which are the testing of the tongue, reaching to theheart, and fall upon the moist, delicate portions of flesh-when, asthey are dissolved, they contract and dry up the little veins, theyare astringent if they are rougher, but if not so rough, then onlyharsh. Those of them which are of an abstergent nature, and purgethe whole surface of the tongue, if they do it in excess, and soencroach as to consume some part of the flesh itself, like potashand soda, are all termed bitter. But the particles which are deficientin the alkaline quality, and which cleanse only moderately, are calledsalt, and having no bitterness or roughness, are regarded as ratheragreeable than otherwise. Bodies which share in and are made smooth bythe heat of the mouth, and which are inflamed, and again in turninflame that which heats them, and which are so light that they arecarried upwards to the sensations of the head, and cut all thatcomes in their way, by reason of these qualities in them, are alltermed pungent. But when these same particles, refined byputrefaction, enter into the narrow veins, and are duly proportionedto the particles of earth and air which are there, they set themwhirling about one another, and while they are in a whirl cause themto dash against and enter into one another, and so form hollowssurrounding the particles that enter-which watery vessels of air(for a film of moisture, sometimes earthy, sometimes pure, is spreadaround the air) are hollow spheres of water; and those of them whichare pure, are transparent, and are called bubbles, while thosecomposed of the earthy liquid, which is in a state of generalagitation and effervescence, are said to boil or ferment-of allthese affections the cause is termed acid. And there is the oppositeaffection arising from an opposite cause, when the mass of enteringparticles, immersed in the moisture of the mouth, is congenial tothe tongue, and smooths and oils over the roughness, and relaxes theparts which are unnaturally contracted, and contracts the partswhich are relaxed, and disposes them all according to theirnature-that sort of remedy of violent affections is pleasant andagreeable to every man, and has the name sweet. But enough of this.

The faculty of smell does not admit of differences of kind; forall smells are of a half formed nature, and no element is soproportioned as to have any smell. The veins about the nose are toonarrow to admit earth and water, and too wide to detain fire andair; and for this reason no one ever perceives the smell of any ofthem; but smells always proceed from bodies that are damp, orputrefying, or liquefying, or evaporating, and are perceptible only inthe intermediate state, when water is changing into air and air intowater; and all of them are either vapor or mist. That which is passingout of air into water is mist, and that which is passing from waterinto air is vapour; and hence all smells are thinner than water andthicker than air. The proof of this is, that when there is anyobstruction to the respiration, and a man draws in his breath byforce, then no smell filters through, but the air without the smellalone penetrates. Wherefore the varieties of smell have no name, andthey have not many, or definite and simple kinds; but they aredistinguished only painful and pleasant, the one sort irritating anddisturbing the whole cavity which is situated between the head and thenavel, the other having a soothing influence, and restoring thissame region to an agreeable and natural condition.

In considering the third kind of sense, hearing, we must speak ofthe causes in which it originates. We may in general assume sound tobe a blow which passes through the ears, and is transmitted by meansof the air, the brain, and the blood, to the soul, and that hearing isthe vibration of this blow, which begins in the head and ends in theregion of the liver. The sound which moves swiftly is acute, and thesound which moves slowly is grave, and that which is regular isequable and smooth, and the reverse is harsh. A great body of sound isloud, and a small body of sound the reverse. Respecting theharmonies of sound I must hereafter speak.

There is a fourth class of sensible things, having many intricatevarieties, which must now be distinguished. They are called by thegeneral name of colours, and are a flame which emanates from everysort of body, and has particles corresponding to the sense of sight. Ihave spoken already, in what has preceded, of the causes whichgenerate sight, and in this place it will be natural and suitable togive a rational theory of colours.

Of the particles coming from other bodies which fall upon the sight,some are smaller and some are larger, and some are equal to theparts of the sight itself. Those which are equal are imperceptible,and we call them transparent. The larger produce contraction, thesmaller dilation, in the sight, exercising a power akin to that of hotand cold bodies on the flesh, or of astringent bodies on the tongue,or of those heating bodies which we termed pungent. White and blackare similar effects of contraction and dilation in another sphere, andfor this reason have a different appearance. Wherefore, we ought toterm white that which dilates the visual ray, and the opposite of thisis black. There is also a swifter motion of a different sort of firewhich strikes and dilates the ray of sight until it reaches theeyes, forcing a way through their passages and melting them, andeliciting from them a union of fire and water which we call tears,being itself an opposite fire which comes to them from an oppositedirection-the inner fire flashes forth like lightning, and the outerfinds a way in and is extinguished in the moisture, and all sorts ofcolours are generated by the mixture. This affection is termeddazzling, and the object which produces it is called bright andflashing. There is another sort of fire which is intermediate, andwhich reaches and mingles with the moisture of the eye withoutflashing; and in this, the fire mingling with the ray of the moisture,produces a colour like blood, to which we give the name of red. Abright hue mingled with red and white gives the colour calledauburn. The law of proportion, however, according to which the severalcolours are formed, even if a man knew he would be foolish in telling,for he could not give any necessary reason, nor indeed any tolerableor probable explanation of them. Again, red, when mingled with blackand white, becomes purple, but it becomes umber when the colours areburnt as well as mingled and the black is more thoroughly mixed withthem. Flame colour is produced by a union of auburn and dun, and dunby an admixture of black and white; pale yellow, by an admixture ofwhite and auburn. White and bright meeting, and falling upon a fullblack, become dark blue, and when dark blue mingles with white, alight blue colour is formed, as flame-colour with black makes leekgreen. There will be no difficulty in seeing how and by whatmixtures the colours derived from these are made according to therules of probability. He, however, who should attempt to verify allthis by experiment, would forget the difference of the human anddivine nature. For God only has the knowledge and also the power whichare able to combine many things into one and again resolve the oneinto many. But no man either is or ever will be able to accomplisheither the one or the other operation.

These are the elements, thus of necessity then subsisting, which thecreator of the fairest and best of created things associated withhimself, when he made the self-sufficing and most perfect God, usingthe necessary causes as his ministers in the accomplishment of hiswork, but himself contriving the good in all his creations.Wherefore we may distinguish two sorts of causes, the one divine andthe other necessary, and may seek for the divine in all things, as faras our nature admits, with a view to the blessed life; but thenecessary kind only for the sake of the divine, considering thatwithout them and when isolated from them, these higher things forwhich we look cannot be apprehended or received or in any way sharedby us.

Seeing, then, that we have now prepared for our use the variousclasses of causes which are the material out of which the remainder ofour discourse must be woven, just as wood is the material of thecarpenter, let us revert in a few words to the point at which webegan, and then endeavour to add on a suitable ending to the beginningof our tale.

As I said at first, when all things were in disorder God createdin each thing in relation to itself, and in all things in relationto each other, all the measures and harmonies which they couldpossibly receive. For in those days nothing had any proportionexcept by accident; nor did any of the things which now have namesdeserve to be named at all-as, for example, fire, water, and therest of the elements. All these the creator first set in order, andout of them he constructed the universe, which was a single animalcomprehending in itself all other animals, mortal and immortal. Now ofthe divine, he himself was the creator, but the creation of the mortalhe committed to his offspring. And they, imitating him, receivedfrom him the immortal principle of the soul; and around this theyproceeded to fashion a mortal body, and. made it to be the vehicleof the so and constructed within the body a soul of another naturewhich was mortal, subject to terrible and irresistibleaffections-first of all, pleasure, the greatest incitement to evil;then, pain, which deters from good; also rashness and fear, twofoolish counsellors, anger hard to be appeased, and hope easily ledastray-these they mingled with irrational sense and with all-daringlove according to necessary laws, and so framed man. Wherefore,fearing to pollute the divine any more than was absolutelyunavoidable, they gave to the mortal nature a separate habitation inanother part of the body, placing the neck between them to be theisthmus and boundary, which they constructed between the head andbreast, to keep them apart. And in the breast, and in what is termedthe thorax, they encased the mortal soul; and as the one part ofthis was superior and the other inferior they divided the cavity ofthe thorax into two parts, as the women's and men's apartments aredivided in houses, and placed the midriff to be a wall of partitionbetween them. That part of the inferior soul which is endowed withcourage and passion and loves contention they settled nearer the head,midway between the midriff and the neck, in order that it might beunder the rule of reason and might join with it in controlling andrestraining the desires when they are no longer willing of their ownaccord to obey the word of command issuing from the citadel.

The heart, the knot of the veins and the fountain of the blood whichraces through all the limbs was set in the place of guard, that whenthe might of passion was roused by reason making proclamation of anywrong assailing them from without or being perpetrated by thedesires within, quickly the whole power of feeling in the body,perceiving these commands and threats, might obey and follow throughevery turn and alley, and thus allow the principle of the best to havethe command in all of them. But the gods, foreknowing that thepalpitation of the heart in the expectation of danger and the swellingand excitement of passion was caused by fire, formed and implantedas a supporter to the heart the lung, which was, in the first place,soft and bloodless, and also had within hollows like the pores of asponge, in order that by receiving the breath and the drink, itmight give coolness and the power of respiration and alleviate theheat. Wherefore they cut the air-channels leading to the lung, andplaced the lung about the heart as a soft spring, that, when passionwas rife within, the heart, beating against a yielding body, mightbe cooled and suffer less, and might thus become more ready to joinwith passion in the service of reason.

The part of the soul which desires meats and drinks and the otherthings of which it has need by reason of the bodily nature, theyplaced between the midriff and the boundary of the navel, contrivingin all this region a sort of manger for the food of the body; andthere they bound it down like a wild animal which was chained upwith man, and must be nourished if man was to exist. They appointedthis lower creation his place here in order that he might be alwaysfeeding at the manger, and have his dwelling as far as might be fromthe council-chamber, making as little noise and disturbance aspossible, and permitting the best part to advise quietly for thegood of the whole. And knowing that this lower principle in manwould not comprehend reason, and even if attaining to some degree ofperception would never naturally care for rational notions, but thatit would be led away by phantoms and visions night and day-to be aremedy for this, God combined with it the liver, and placed it inthe house of the lower nature, contriving that it should be solidand smooth, and bright and sweet, and should also have a bitterquality, in order that the power of thought, which proceeds from themind, might be reflected as in a mirror which receives likenesses ofobjects and gives back images of them to the sight; and so mightstrike terror into the desires, when, making use of the bitter part ofthe liver, to which it is akin, it comes threatening and invading, anddiffusing this bitter element swiftly through the whole liver producescolours like bile, and contracting every part makes it wrinkled andrough; and twisting out of its right place and contorting the lobe andclosing and shutting up the vessels and gates, causes pain andloathing. And the converse happens when some gentle inspiration of theunderstanding pictures images of an opposite character, and allays thebile and bitterness by refusing to stir or touch the nature opposed toitself, but by making use of the natural sweetness of the liver,corrects all things and makes them to be right and smooth and free,and renders the portion of the soul which resides about the liverhappy and joyful, enabling it to pass the night in peace, and topractise divination in sleep, inasmuch as it has no share in mindand reason. For the authors of our being, remembering the command oftheir father when he bade them create the human race as good as theycould, that they might correct our inferior parts and make them toattain a measure of truth, placed in the liver the seat of divination.And herein is a proof that God has given the art of divination notto the wisdom, but to the foolishness of man. No man, when in hiswits, attains prophetic truth and inspiration; but when he receivesthe inspired word, either his intelligence is enthralled in sleep,or he is demented by some distemper or possession. And he who wouldunderstand what he remembers to have been said, whether in a dreamor when he was awake, by the prophetic and inspired nature, or woulddetermine by reason the meaning of the apparitions which he hasseen, and what indications they afford to this man or that, of past,present or future good and evil, must first recover his wits. But,while he continues demented, he cannot judge of the visions which hesees or the words which he utters; the ancient saying is very true,that "only a man who has his wits can act or judge about himself andhis own affairs." And for this reason it is customary to appointinterpreters to be judges of the true inspiration. Some persons callthem prophets; they are quite unaware that they are only theexpositors of dark sayings and visions, and are not to be calledprophets at all, but only interpreters of prophecy.

Such is the nature of the liver, which is placed as we havedescribed in order that it may give prophetic intimations. Duringthe life of each individual these intimations are plainer, but afterhis death the liver becomes blind, and delivers oracles too obscure tobe intelligible. The neighbouring organ [the spleen] is situated onthe left-hand side, and is constructed with a view of keeping theliver bright and pure-like a napkin, always ready prepared and at handto clean the mirror. And hence, when any impurities arise in theregion of the liver by reason of disorders of the body, the loosenature of the spleen, which is composed of a hollow and bloodlesstissue, receives them all and dears them away, and when filled withthe unclean matter, swells and festers, but, again, when the body ispurged, settles down into the same place as before, and is humbled.

Concerning the soul, as to which part is mortal and which divine,and how and why they are separated, and where located, if Godacknowledges that we have spoken the truth, then, and then only, canwe be confident; still, we may venture to assert that what has beensaid by us is probable, and will be rendered more probable byinvestigation. Let us assume thus much.

The creation of the rest of follows next in order, and this we mayinvestigate in a similar manner. And it appears to be very meet thatthe body should be framed on the following principles:-

The authors of our race were aware that we should be intemperatein eating and drinking, and take a good deal more than was necessaryor proper, by reason of gluttony. In order then that disease might notquickly destroy us, and lest our mortal race should perish withoutfulfilling its end-intending to provide against this, the gods madewhat is called the lower belly, to be a receptacle for the superfluousmeat and drink, and formed the convolution of the bowels, so thatthe food might be prevented from passing quickly through andcompelling the body to require more food, thus producing insatiablegluttony, and making the whole race an enemy to philosophy andmusic, and rebellious against the divinest element within us.

The bones and flesh, and other similar parts of us, were made asfollows. The first principle of all of them was the generation ofthe marrow. For the bonds of life which unite the soul with the bodyare made fast there, and they are the root and foundation of the humanrace. The marrow itself is created out of other materials: God tooksuch of the primary triangles as were straight and smooth, and wereadapted by their perfection to produce fire and water, and air andearth-these, I say, he separated from their kinds, and mingling themin due proportions with one another, made the marrow out of them to bea universal seed of the whole race of mankind; and in this seed hethen planted and enclosed the souls, and in the originaldistribution gave to the marrow as many and various forms as thedifferent kinds of souls were hereafter to receive. That which, like afield, was to receive the divine seed, he made round every way, andcalled that portion of the marrow, brain, intending that, when ananimal was perfected, the vessel containing this substance should bethe head; but that which was intended to contain the remaining andmortal part of the soul he distributed into figures at once around andelongated, and he called them all by the name "marrow"; and tothese, as to anchors, fastening the bonds of the whole soul, heproceeded to fashion around them the entire framework of our body,constructing for the marrow, first of all a complete covering of bone.

Bone was composed by him in the following manner. Having sifted pureand smooth earth he kneaded it and wetted it with marrow, and afterthat he put it into fire and then into water, and once more intofire and again into water-in this way by frequent transfers from oneto the other he made it insoluble by either. Out of this he fashioned,as in a lathe, a globe made of bone, which he placed around the brain,and in this he left a narrow opening; and around the marrow of theneck and back he formed vertebrae which he placed under one anotherlike pivots, beginning at the head and extending through the wholeof the trunk. Thus wishing to preserve the entire seed, he enclosed itin a stone-like casing, inserting joints, and using in the formationof them the power of the other or diverse as an intermediate nature,that they might have motion and flexure. Then again, consideringthat the bone would be too brittle and inflexible, and when heated andagain cooled would soon mortify and destroy the seed within-havingthis in view, he contrived the sinews and the flesh, that so bindingall the members together by the sinews, which admitted of beingstretched and relaxed about the vertebrae, he might thus make the bodycapable of flexion and extension, while the flesh would serve as aprotection against the summer heat and against the winter cold, andalso against falls, softly and easily yielding to external bodies,like articles made of felt; and containing in itself a warm moisturewhich in summer exudes and makes the surface damp, would impart anature coolness to the whole body; and again in winter by the helpof this internal warmth would form a very tolerable defence againstthe frost which surrounds it and attacks it from without. He whomodelled us, considering these things, mixed earth with fire and waterand blended them; and making a ferment of acid and salt, he mingled itwith them and formed soft and succulent flesh. As for the sinews, hemade them of a mixture of bone and unfermented flesh, attempered so asto be in a mean, and gave them a yellow colour; wherefore the sinewshave a firmer and more glutinous nature than flesh, but a softer andmoister nature than the bones. With these God covered the bones andmarrow, binding them together by sinews, and then enshrouded themall in an upper covering of flesh. The more living and sensitive ofthe bones he enclosed in the thinnest film of flesh, and those whichhad the least life within them in the thickest and most solid flesh.So again on the joints of the bones, where reason indicated that nomore was required, he placed only a thin covering of flesh, that itmight not interfere with the flexion of our bodies and make themunwieldy because difficult to move; and also that it might not, bybeing crowded and pressed and matted together, destroy sensation byreason of its hardness, and impair the memory and dull the edge ofintelligence. Wherefore also the thighs and the shanks and the hips,and the bones of the arms and the forearms, and other parts which haveno joints, and the inner bones, which on account of the rarity ofthe soul in the marrow are destitute of reason-all these areabundantly provided with flesh; but such as have mind in them are ingeneral less fleshy, except where the creator has made some partsolely of flesh in order to give sensation-as, for example, thetongue. But commonly this is not the case. For the nature whichcomes into being and grows up in us by a law of necessity, does notadmit of the combination of solid bone and much flesh with acuteperceptions. More than any other part the framework of the headwould have had them, if they could have co-existed, and the humanrace, having a strong and fleshy and sinewy head, would have had alife twice or many times as long as it now has, and also morehealthy and free from pain.

But our creators, considering whether they should make alonger-lived race which was worse, or a shorter-lived race which wasbetter, came to the conclusion that every one ought to prefer ashorter span of life, which was better, to a longer one, which wasworse; and therefore they covered the head with thin bone, but notwith flesh and sinews, since it had no joints; and thus the head wasadded, having more wisdom and sensation than the rest of the body, butalso being in every man far weaker. For these reasons and after thismanner God placed the sinews at the extremity of the head, in a circleround the neck, and glued them together by the principle of likenessand fastened the extremities of the jawbones to them below the face,and the other sinews he dispersed throughout the body, fasteninglimb to limb. The framers of us framed the mouth, as now arranged,having teeth and tongue and lips, with a view to the necessary and thegood, contriving the way in for necessary purposes, the way out forthe best purposes; for that is necessary which enters in and givesfood to the body; but the river of speech, which flows out of a manand ministers to the intelligence, is the fairest and noblest of allstreams. Still the head could neither be left a bare frame of bones,on account of the extremes of heat and cold in the differentseasons, nor yet be allowed to be wholly covered, and so become dulland senseless by reason of an overgrowth of flesh. The fleshy naturewas not therefore wholly dried up, but a large sort of peel was partedoff and remained over, which is now called the skin. This met and grewby the help of the cerebral moisture, and became the circularenvelopment of the head. And the moisture, rising up under thesutures, watered and closed in the skin upon the crown, forming a sortof knot. The diversity of the sutures was caused by the power of thecourses of the soul and of the food, and the more these struggledagainst one another the more numerous they became, and fewer if thestruggle were less violent. This skin the divine power pierced allround with fire, and out of the punctures which were thus made themoisture issued forth, and the liquid and heat which was pure cameaway, and a mixed part which was composed of the same material asthe skin, and had a fineness equal to the punctures, was borne up byits own impulse and extended far outside the head, but being tooslow to escape, was thrust back by the external air, and rolled upunderneath the skin, where it took root. Thus the hair sprang up inthe skin, being akin to it because it is like threads of leather,but rendered harder and closer through the pressure of the cold, bywhich each hair, while in process of separation from the skin, iscompressed and cooled. Wherefore the creator formed the head hairy,making use of the causes which I have mentioned, and reflecting alsothat instead of flesh the brain needed the hair to be a light coveringor guard, which would give shade in summer and shelter in winter,and at the same time would not impede our quickness of perception.From the combination of sinew, skin, and bone, in the structure of thefinger, there arises a triple compound, which, when dried up, takesthe form of one hard skin partaking of all three natures, and wasfabricated by these second causes, but designed by mind which is theprincipal cause with an eye to the future. For our creators wellknew that women and other animals would some day be framed out of men,and they further knew that many animals would require the use of nailsfor many purposes; wherefore they fashioned in men at their firstcreation the rudiments of nails. For this purpose and for thesereasons they caused skin, hair, and nails to grow at the extremitiesof the limbs. And now that all the parts and members of the mortalanimal had come together, since its life of necessity consisted offire and breath, and it therefore wasted away by dissolution anddepletion, the gods contrived the following remedy: They mingled anature akin to that of man with other forms and perceptions, andthus created another kind of animal. These are the trees and plantsand seeds which have been improved by cultivation and are nowdomesticated among us; anciently there were only the will kinds, whichare older than the cultivated. For everything that partakes of lifemay be truly called a living being, and the animal of which we are nowspeaking partakes of the third kind of soul, which is said to beseated between the midriff and the navel, having no part in opinion orreason or mind, but only in feelings of pleasure and pain and thedesires which accompany them. For this nature is always in a passivestate, revolving in and about itself, repelling the motion fromwithout and using its own, and accordingly is not endowed by naturewith the power of observing or reflecting on its own concerns.Wherefore it lives and does not differ from a living being, but isfixed and rooted in the same spot, having no power of self-motion.

Now after the superior powers had created all these natures to befood for us who are of the inferior nature, they cut variouschannels through the body as through a garden, that it might bewatered as from a running stream. In the first place, they cut twohidden channels or veins down the back where the skin and the fleshjoin, which answered severally to the right and left side of the body.These they let down along the backbone, so as to have the marrow ofgeneration between them, where it was most likely to flourish, andin order that the stream coming down from above might flow freely tothe other parts, and equalise the irrigation. In the next place,they divided the veins about the head, and interlacing them, they sentthem in opposite directions; those coming from the right side theysent to the left of the body, and those from the left they divertedtowards the right, so that they and the skin might together form abond which should fasten the head to the body, since the crown ofthe head was not encircled by sinews; and also in order that thesensations from both sides might be distributed over the whole body.And next, they ordered the water-courses of the body in a manner whichI will describe, and which will be more easily understood if webegin by admitting that all things which have lesser parts retainthe greater, but the greater cannot retain the lesser. Now of allnatures fire has the smallest parts, and therefore penetratesthrough earth and water and air and their compounds, nor cananything hold it. And a similar principle applies to the humanbelly; for when meats and drinks enter it, it holds them, but itcannot hold air and fire, because the particles of which theyconsist are smaller than its own structure.

These elements, therefore, God employed for the sake of distributingmoisture from the belly into the veins, weaving together network offire and air like a weel, having at the entrance two lesser weels;further he constructed one of these with two openings, and from thelesser weels he extended cords reaching all round to the extremitiesof the network. All the interior of the net he made of fire, but thelesser weels and their cavity, of air. The network he took andspread over the newly-formed animal in the following manner:-He letthe lesser weels pass into the mouth; there were two of them, andone he let down by the air-pipes into the lungs, the other by the sideof the air-pipes into the belly. The former he divided into twobranches, both of which he made to meet at the channels of the nose,so that when the way through the mouth did not act, the streams of themouth as well were replenished through the nose. With the other cavity(i.e. of the greater weel) he enveloped the hollow parts of thebody, and at one time he made all this to flow into the lesserweels, quite gently, for they are composed of air, and at another timehe caused the lesser weels to flow back again; and the net he madeto find a way in and out through the pores of the body, and the raysof fire which are bound fast within followed the passage of the aireither way, never at any time ceasing so long as the mortal beingholds together. This process, as we affirm, the name-giver namedinspiration and expiration. And all this movement, active as well aspassive, takes place in order that the body, being watered and cooled,may receive nourishment and life; for when the respiration is going inand out, and the fire, which is fast bound within, follows it, andever and anon moving to and fro, enters through the belly andreaches the meat and drink, it dissolves them, and dividing theminto small portions and guiding them through the passages where itgoes, pumps them as from a fountain into the channels of the veins,and makes the stream of the veins flow through the body as through aconduit.

Let us once more consider the phenomena of respiration, andenquire into the causes which have made it what it is. They are asfollows:-Seeing that there is no such thing as a vacuum into which anyof those things which are moved can enter, and the breath is carriedfrom us into the external air, the next point is, as will be dear toevery one, that it does not go into a vacant space, but pushes itsneighbour out of its place, and that which is thrust out in turndrives out its neighbour; and in this everything of necessity atlast comes round to that place from whence the breath came forth,and enters in there, and following the breath, fills up the vacantspace; and this goes on like the rotation of a wheel, because therecan be no such thing as a vacuum. Wherefore also the breast and thelungs, when they emit the breath, are replenished by the air whichsurrounds the body and which enters in through the pores of theflesh and is driven round in a circle; and again, the air which issent away and passes out through the body forces the breath inwardsthrough the passage of the mouth and the nostrils. Now the origin ofthis movement may be supposed to be as follows. In the interior ofevery animal the hottest part is that which is around the blood andveins; it is in a manner on internal fountain of fire, which wecompare to the network of a creel, being woven all of fire andextended through the centre of the body, while the-outer parts arecomposed of air. Now we must admit that heat naturally proceedsoutward to its own place and to its kindred element; and as thereare two exits for the heat, the out through the body, and the otherthrough the mouth and nostrils, when it moves towards the one, itdrives round the air at the other, and that which is driven roundfalls into the fire and becomes warm, and that which goes forth iscooled. But when the heat changes its place, and the particles atthe other exit grow warmer, the hotter air inclining in that directionand carried towards its native element, fire, pushes round the airat the other; and this being affected in the same way andcommunicating the same impulse, a circular motion swaying to andfrom is produced by the double process, which we call inspirationand expiration.

The phenomena of medical cupping-glasses and of the swallowing ofdrink and of the projection of bodies, whether discharged in the airor bowled along the ground, are to be investigated on a similarprinciple; and swift and slow sounds, which appear to be high and low,and are sometimes discordant on account of their inequality, andthen again harmonical on account of the equality of the motion whichthey excite in us. For when the motions of the antecedent swiftersounds begin to pause and the two are equalised, the slower soundsovertake the swifter and then propel them. When they overtake themthey do not intrude a new and discordant motion, but introduce thebeginnings of a slower, which answers to the swifter as it diesaway, thus producing a single mixed expression out of high and low,whence arises a pleasure which even the unwise feel, and which tothe wise becomes a higher sort of delight, being an imitation ofdivine harmony in mortal motions. Moreover, as to the flowing ofwater, the fall of the thunderbolt, and the marvels that areobserved about the attraction of amber and the Heraclean stones,-innone of these cases is there any attraction; but he who investigatesrightly, will find that such wonderful phenomena are attributable tothe combination of certain conditions-the non-existence of a vacuum,the fact that objects push one another round, and that they changeplaces, passing severally into their proper positions as they aredivided or combined

Such as we have seen, is the nature and such are the causes ofrespiration-the subject in which this discussion originated. For thefire cuts the food and following the breath surges up within, fire andbreath rising together and filling the veins by drawing up out ofthe belly and pouring into them the cut portions of the food; and sothe streams of food are kept flowing through the whole body in allanimals. And fresh cuttings from kindred substances, whether thefruits of the earth or herb of the field, which God planted to beour daily food, acquire all sorts of colours by their inter-mixture;but red is the most pervading of them, being created by the cuttingaction of fire and by the impression which it makes on a moistsubstance; and hence the liquid which circulates in the body has acolour such as we have described. The liquid itself we call blood,which nourishes the flesh and the whole body, whence all parts arewatered and empty places filled.

Now the process of repletion and evacuation is effected after themanner of the universal motion by which all kindred substances aredrawn towards one another. For the external elements which surround usare always causing us to consume away, and distributing and sendingoff like to like; the particles of blood, too, which are divided andcontained within the frame of the animal as in a sort of heaven, arecompelled to imitate the motion of the universe. Each, therefore, ofthe divided parts within us, being carried to its kindred nature,replenishes the void. When more is taken away than flows in, then wedecay, and when less, we grow and increase.

The frame of the entire creature when young has the triangles ofeach kind new, and may be compared to the keel of a vessel which isjust off the stocks; they are locked firmly together and yet the wholemass is soft and delicate, being freshly formed of marrow and nurturedon milk. Now when the triangles out of which meats and drinks arecomposed come in from without, and are comprehended in the body, beingolder and weaker than the triangles already there, the frame of thebody gets the better of them and its newer triangles cut them up,and so the animal grows great, being nourished by a multitude ofsimilar particles. But when the roots of the triangles are loosened byhaving undergone many conflicts with many things in the course oftime, they are no longer able to cut or assimilate the food whichenters, but are themselves easily divided by the bodies which comein from without. In this way every animal is overcome and decays,and this affection is called old age. And at last, when the bonds bywhich the triangles of the marrow are united no longer hold, and areparted by the strain of existence, they in turn loosen the bonds ofthe soul, and she, obtaining a natural release, flies away with joy.For that which takes place according to nature is pleasant, but thatwhich is contrary to nature is painful. And thus death, if caused bydisease or produced by wounds, is painful and violent; but that sortof death which comes with old age and fulfils the debt of nature isthe easiest of deaths, and is accompanied with pleasure rather thanwith pain.

Now every one can see whence diseases arise. There are fournatures out of which the body is compacted, earth and fire and waterand air, and the unnatural excess or defect of these, or the change ofany of them from its own natural place into another, or-since thereare more kinds than one of fire and of the other elements-theassumption by any of these of a wrong kind, or any similarirregularity, produces disorders and diseases; for when any of them isproduced or changed in a manner contrary to nature, the parts whichwere previously cool grow warm, and those which were dry become moist,and the light become heavy, and the heavy light; all sorts ofchanges occur. For, as we affirm, a thing can only remain the samewith itself, whole and sound, when the same is added to it, orsubtracted from it, in the same respect and in the same manner andin due proportion; and whatever comes or goes away in violation ofthese laws causes all manner of changes and infinite diseases andcorruptions. Now there is a second class of structures which arealso natural, and this affords a second opportunity of observingdiseases to him who would understand them. For whereas marrow and boneand flesh and sinews are composed of the four elements, and the blood,though after another manner, is likewise formed out of them, mostdiseases originate in the way which I have described; but the worst ofall owe their severity to the fact that the generation of thesesubstances stances in a wrong order; they are then destroyed. Forthe natural order is that the flesh and sinews should be made ofblood, the sinews out of the fibres to which they are akin, and theflesh out of the dots which are formed when the fibres areseparated. And the glutinous and rich matter which comes away from thesinews and the flesh, not only glues the flesh to the bones, butnourishes and imparts growth to the bone which surrounds the marrow;and by reason of the solidity of the bones, that which filters throughconsists of the purest and smoothest and oiliest sort of triangles,dropping like dew from the bones and watering the marrow.

Now when each process takes place in this order, health commonlyresults; when in the opposite order, disease. For when the fleshbecomes decomposed and sends back the wasting substance into theveins, then an over-supply of blood of diverse kinds, mingling withair in the veins, having variegated colours and bitter properties,as well as acid and saline qualities, contains all sorts of bile andserum and phlegm. For all things go the wrong way, and having becomecorrupted, first they taint the blood itself, and then ceasing to givenourishment the body they are carried along the veins in alldirections, no longer preserving the order of their natural courses,but at war with themselves, because they receive no good from oneanother, and are hostile to the abiding constitution of the body,which they corrupt and dissolve. The oldest part of the flesh which iscorrupted, being hard to decompose, from long burning grows black, andfrom being everywhere corroded becomes bitter, and is injurious toevery part of the body which is still uncorrupted. Sometimes, when thebitter element is refined away, the black part assumes an aciditywhich takes the place of the bitterness; at other times the bitternessbeing tinged with blood has a redder colour; and this, when mixed withblack, takes the hue of grass; and again, an auburn colour mingleswith the bitter matter when new flesh is decomposed by the firewhich surrounds the internal flame-to all which symptoms somephysician perhaps, or rather some philosopher, who had the power ofseeing in many dissimilar things one nature deserving of a name, hasassigned the common name of bile. But the other kinds of bile arevariously distinguished by their colours. As for serum, that sortwhich is the watery part of blood is innocent, but that which is asecretion of black and acid bile is malignant when mingled by thepower of heat with any salt substance, and is then called acid phlegm. Again, the substance which is formed by the liquefaction of new andtender flesh when air is present, if inflated and encased in liquid soas to form bubbles, which separately are invisible owing to theirsmall size, but when collected are of a bulk which is visible, andhave a white colour arising out of the generation of foam-all thisdecomposition of tender flesh when inter-mingled with air is termed byus white phlegm. And the whey or sediment of newly-formed phlegm issweat and tears, and includes the various daily discharges by whichthe body is purified. Now all these become causes of disease whenthe blood is not replenished in a natural manner by food and drink butgains bulk from opposite sources in violation of the laws of nature.When the several parts of the flesh are separated by disease, if thefoundation remains, the power of the disorder is only half as great,and there is still a prospect of an easy recovery; but when that whichbinds the flesh to the bones is diseased, and no longer beingseparated from the muscles and sinews, ceases to give nourishment tothe bone and to unite flesh and bone, and from being oily and smoothand glutinous becomes rough and salt and dry, owing to bad regimen,then all the substance thus corrupted crumbles away under the fleshand the sinews, and separates from the bone, and the fleshy parts fallaway from their foundation and leave the sinews bare and full ofbrine, and the flesh again gets into the circulation of the bloodand makes the previously-mentioned disorders still greater. And ifthese bodily affections be severe, still worse are the priordisorders; as when the bone itself, by reason of the density of theflesh, does not obtain sufficient air, but becomes mouldy and hotand gangrened and receives no nutriment, and the natural process isinverted, and the bone crumbling passes into the food, and the foodinto the flesh, and the flesh again falling into the blood makes allmaladies that may occur more virulent than those already mentioned.But the worst case of all is when the marrow is diseased, eitherfrom excess or defect; and this is the cause of the very greatestand most fatal disorders, in which the whole course of the body isreversed.

There is a third class of diseases which may be conceived of asarising in three ways; for they are produced sometimes by wind, andsometimes by phlegm, and sometimes by bile. When the lung, which isthe dispenser of the air to the body, is obstructed by rheums andits passages are not free, some of them not acting, while throughothers too much air enters, then the parts which are unrefreshed byair corrode, while in other parts the excess of air forcing its waythrough the veins distorts them and decomposing the body is enclosedin the midst of it and occupies the midriff thus numberless painfuldiseases are produced, accompanied by copious sweats. And oftentimeswhen the flesh is dissolved in the body, wind, generated within andunable to escape, is the source of quite as much pain as the aircoming in from without; but the greatest pain is felt when the windgets about the sinews and the veins of the shoulders, and swellsthem up, so twists back the great tendons and the sinews which areconnected with them. These disorders are called tetanus andopisthotonus, by reason of the tension which accompanies them. Thecure of them is difficult; relief is in most cases given by feversupervening. The white phlegm, though dangerous when detained withinby reason of the air-bubbles, yet if it can communicate with theoutside air, is less severe, and only discolours the body,generating leprous eruptions and similar diseases. When it ismingled with black bile and dispersed about the courses of the head,which are the divinest part of us, the attack if coming on in sleep,is not so severe; but when assailing those who are awake it is hard tobe got rid of, and being an affection of a sacred part, is most justlycalled sacred. An acid and salt phlegm, again, is the source of allthose diseases which take the form of catarrh, but they have manynames because the places into which they flow are manifold.

Inflammations of the body come from burnings and inflamings, and allof them originate in bile. When bile finds a means of discharge, itboils up and sends forth all sorts of tumours; but when imprisonedwithin, it generates many inflammatory diseases, above all whenmingled with pure blood; since it then displaces the fibres whichare scattered about in the blood and are designed to maintain thebalance of rare and dense, in order that the blood may not be soliquefied by heat as to exude from the pores of the body, nor againbecome too dense and thus find a difficulty in circulating through theveins. The fibres are so constituted as to maintain this balance;and if any one brings them all together when the blood is dead andin process of cooling, then the blood which remains becomes fluid, butif they are left alone, they soon congeal by reason of the surroundingcold. The fibres having this power over the blood, bile, which is onlystale blood, and which from being flesh is dissolved again into blood,at the first influx coming in little by little, hot and liquid, iscongealed by the power of the fibres; and so congealing and made tocool, it produces internal cold and shuddering. When it enters withmore of a flood and overcomes the fibres by its heat, and boiling upthrows them into disorder, if it have power enough to maintain itssupremacy, it penetrates the marrow and burns up what may be termedthe cables of the soul, and sets her free; but when there is not somuch of it, and the body though wasted still holds out, the bile isitself mastered, and is either utterly banished, or is thrustthrough the veins into the lower or upper-belly, and is driven outof the body like an exile from a state in which there has been civilwar; whence arise diarrhoeas and dysenteries, and all suchdisorders. When the constitution is disordered by excess of fire,continuous heat and fever are the result; when excess of air is thecause, then the fever is quotidian; when of water, which is a moresluggish element than either fire or air, then the fever is a tertian;when of earth, which is the most sluggish of the four, and is onlypurged away in a four-fold period, the result is a quartan fever,which can with difficulty be shaken off.

Such is the manner in which diseases of the body arise; thedisorders of the soul, which depend upon the body, originate asfollows. We must acknowledge disease of the mind to be a want ofintelligence; and of this there are two kinds; to wit, madness andignorance. In whatever state a man experiences either of them, thatstate may be called disease; and excessive pains and pleasures arejustly to be regarded as the greatest diseases to which the soul isliable. For a man who is in great joy or in great pain, in hisunseasonable eagerness to attain the one and to avoid the other, isnot able to see or to hear anything rightly; but he is mad, and isat the time utterly incapable of any participation in reason. He whohas the seed about the spinal marrow too plentiful and overflowing,like a tree overladen with fruit, has many throes, and also obtainsmany pleasures in his desires and their offspring, and is for the mostpart of his life deranged, because his pleasures and pains are so verygreat; his soul is rendered foolish and disordered by his body; yet heis regarded not as one diseased, but as one who is voluntarily bad,which is a mistake. The truth is that the intemperance of love is adisease of the soul due chiefly to the moisture and fluidity whichis produced in one of the elements by the loose consistency of thebones. And in general, all that which is termed the incontinence ofpleasure and is deemed a reproach under the idea that the wickedvoluntarily do wrong is not justly a matter for reproach. For no manis voluntarily bad; but the bad become bad by reason of an illdisposition of the body and bad education, things which are hateful toevery man and happen to him against his will. And in the case ofpain too in like manner the soul suffers much evil from the body.For where the acid and briny phlegm and other bitter and bilioushumours wander about in the body, and find no exit or escape, butare pent up within and mingle their own vapours with the motions ofthe soul, and are blended, with them, they produce all sorts ofdiseases, more or fewer, and in every degree of intensity; and beingcarried to the three places of the soul, whichever they mayseverally assail, they create infinite varieties of ill-temper andmelancholy, of rashness and cowardice, and also of forgetfulness andstupidity. Further, when to this evil constitution of body evilforms of government are added and evil discourses are uttered inprivate as well as in public, and no sort of instruction is given inyouth to cure these evils, then all of us who are bad become badfrom two causes which are entirely beyond our control. In such casesthe planters are to blame rather than the plants, the educators ratherthan the educated. But however that may be, we should endeavour as faras we can by education, and studies, and learning, to avoid vice andattain virtue; this, however, is part of another subject.

There is a corresponding enquiry concerning the mode of treatment bywhich the mind and the body are to be preserved, about which it ismeet and right that I should say a word in turn; for it is more ourduty to speak of the good than of the evil. Everything that is good isfair, and the animal fair is not without proportion, and the animalwhich is to be fair must have due proportion. Now we perceive lessersymmetries or proportions and reason about them, but of the highestand greatest we take no heed; for there is no proportion ordisproportion more productive of health and disease, and virtue andvice, than that between soul and body. This however we do notperceive, nor do we reflect that when a weak or small frame is thevehicle of a great and mighty soul, or conversely, when a littlesoul is encased in a large body, then the whole animal is not fair,for it lacks the most important of all symmetries; but the dueproportion of mind and body is the fairest and loveliest of all sightsto him who has the seeing eye. Just as a body which has a leg toolong, or which is unsymmetrical in some other respect, is anunpleasant sight, and also, when doing its share of work, is muchdistressed and makes convulsive efforts, and often stumbles throughawkwardness, and is the cause of infinite evil to its own self-in likemanner we should conceive of the double nature which we call theliving being; and when in this compound there is an impassioned soulmore powerful than the body, that soul, I say, convulses and fillswith disorders the whole inner nature of man; and when eager in thepursuit of some sort of learning or study, causes wasting; or again,when teaching or disputing in private or in public, and strifes andcontroversies arise, inflames and dissolves the composite frame of manand introduces rheums; and the nature of this phenomenon is notunderstood by most professors of medicine, who ascribe it to theopposite of the real cause. And once more, when body large and toostrong for the soul is united to a small and weak intelligence, theninasmuch as there are two desires natural to man,-one of food forthe sake of the body, and one of wisdom for the sake of the divinerpart of us-then, I say, the motions of the stronger, getting thebetter and increasing their own power, but making the soul dull, andstupid, and forgetful, engender ignorance, which is the greatest ofdiseases. There is one protection against both kinds ofdisproportion:-that we should not move the body without the soul orthe soul without the body, and thus they will be on their guardagainst each other, and be healthy and well balanced. And thereforethe mathematician or any one else whose thoughts are much absorbedin some intellectual pursuit, must allow his body also to have dueexercise, and practise gymnastic; and he who is careful to fashion thebody, should in turn impart to the soul its proper motions, and shouldcultivate music and all philosophy, if he would deserve to be calledtruly fair and truly good. And the separate parts should be treated inthe same manner, in imitation of the pattern of the universe; for asthe body is heated and also cooled within by the elements whichenter into it, and is again dried up and moistened by external things,and experiences these and the like affections from both kinds ofmotions, the result is that the body if given up to motion when in astate of quiescence is overmastered and perishes; but if any one, inimitation of that which we call the foster-mother and nurse of theuniverse, will not allow the body ever to be inactive, but is alwaysproducing motions and agitations through its whole extent, whichform the natural defence against other motions both internal andexternal, and by moderate exercise reduces to order according to theiraffinities the particles and affections which are wandering aboutthe body, as we have already said when speaking of the universe, hewill not allow enemy placed by the side of enemy to stir up wars anddisorders in the body, but he will place friend by the side of friend,so as to create health.

Now of all motions that is the best which is produced in a thingby itself, for it is most akin to the motion of thought and of theuniverse; but that motion which is caused by others is not so good,and worst of all is that which moves the body, when at rest, inparts only and by some external agency. Wherefore of all modes ofpurifying and reuniting the body the best is gymnastic; the nextbest is a surging motion, as in sailing or any other mode ofconveyance which is not fatiguing; the third sort of motion may beof use in a case of extreme necessity, but in any other will beadopted by no man of sense: I mean the purgative treatment ofphysicians; for diseases unless they are very dangerous should notbe irritated by medicines, since every form of disease is in amanner akin to the living being, whose complex frame has anappointed term of life. For not the whole race only, but eachindividual-barring inevitable accidents-comes into the world havinga fixed span, and the triangles in us are originally framed with powerto last for a certain time, beyond which no man prolong his life.And this holds also of the constitution of diseases; if any oneregardless of the appointed time tries to subdue them by medicine,he only aggravates and multiplies them. Wherefore we ought always tomanage them by regimen, as far as a man can spare the time, and notprovoke a disagreeable enemy by medicines.

Enough of the composite animal, and of the body which is a part ofhim, and of the manner in which a man may train and be trained byhimself so as to live most according to reason: and we must aboveand before all provide that the element which is to train him shall bethe fairest and best adapted to that purpose. A minute discussion ofthis subject would be a serious task; but if, as before, I am togive only an outline, the subject may not unfitly be summed up asfollows.

I have often remarked that there are three kinds of soul locatedwithin us, having each of them motions, and I must now repeat in thefewest words possible, that one part, if remaining inactive andceasing from its natural motion, must necessarily become very weak,but that which is trained and exercised, very strong. Wherefore weshould take care that the movements of the different parts of the soulshould be in due proportion.

And we should consider that God gave the sovereign part of the humansoul to be the divinity of each one, being that part which, as we say,dwells at the top of the body, inasmuch as we are a plant not of anearthly but of a heavenly growth, raises us from earth to ourkindred who are in heaven. And in this we say truly; for the divinepower suspended the head and root of us from that place where thegeneration of the soul first began, and thus made the whole bodyupright. When a man is always occupied with the cravings of desire andambition, and is eagerly striving to satisfy them, all his thoughtsmust be mortal, and, as far as it is possible altogether to becomesuch, he must be mortal every whit, because he has cherished hismortal part. But he who has been earnest in the love of knowledgeand of true wisdom, and has exercised his intellect more than anyother part of him, must have thoughts immortal and divine, if heattain truth, and in so far as human nature is capable of sharing inimmortality, he must altogether be immortal; and since he is evercherishing the divine power, and has the divinity within him inperfect order, he will be perfectly happy. Now there is only one wayof taking care of things, and this is to give to each the food andmotion which are natural to it. And the motions which are naturallyakin to the divine principle within us are the thoughts andrevolutions of the universe. These each man should follow, and correctthe courses of the head which were corrupted at our birth, and bylearning the harmonies and revolutions of the universe, shouldassimilate the thinking being to the thought, renewing his originalnature, and having assimilated them should attain to that perfect lifewhich the gods have set before mankind, both for the present and thefuture.

Thus our original design of discoursing about the universe down tothe creation of man is nearly completed. A brief mention may be madeof the generation of other animals, so far as the subject admits ofbrevity; in this manner our argument will best attain a dueproportion. On the subject of animals, then, the following remarks maybe offered. Of the men who came into the world, those who were cowardsor led unrighteous lives may with reason be supposed to have changedinto the nature of women in the second generation. And this was thereason why at that time the gods created in us the desire of sexualintercourse, contriving in man one animated substance, and in womananother, which they formed respectively in the following manner. Theoutlet for drink by which liquids pass through the lung under thekidneys and into the bladder, which receives then by the pressure ofthe air emits them, was so fashioned by them as to penetrate also intothe body of the marrow, which passes from the head along the neckand through the back, and which in the preceding discourse we havenamed the seed. And the seed having life, and becoming endowed withrespiration, produces in that part in which it respires a livelydesire of emission, and thus creates in us the love of procreation.Wherefore also in men the organ of generation becoming rebelliousand masterful, like an animal disobedient to reason, and maddened withthe sting of lust, seeks to gain absolute sway; and the same is thecase with the so-called womb or matrix of women; the animal withinthem is desirous of procreating children, and when remainingunfruitful long beyond its proper time, gets discontented and angry,and wandering in every direction through the body, closes up thepassages of the breath, and, by obstructing respiration, drives themto extremity, causing all varieties of disease, until at length thedesire and love of the man and the woman, bringing them together andas it were plucking the fruit from the tree, sow in the womb, as ina field, animals unseen by reason of their smallness and without form;these again are separated and matured within; they are then finallybrought out into the light, and thus the generation of animals iscompleted.

Thus were created women and the female sex in general. But therace of birds was created out of innocent light-minded men, who,although their minds were directed toward heaven, imagined, in theirsimplicity, that the clearest demonstration of the things above was tobe obtained by sight; these were remodelled and transformed intobirds, and they grew feathers instead of hair. The race of wildpedestrian animals, again, came from those who had no philosophy inany of their thoughts, and never considered at all about the nature ofthe heavens, because they had ceased to use the courses of the head,but followed the guidance of those parts of the soul which are inthe breast. In consequence of these habits of theirs they had theirfront-legs and their heads resting upon the earth to which they weredrawn by natural affinity; and the crowns of their heads wereelongated and of all sorts of shapes, into which the courses of thesoul were crushed by reason of disuse. And this was the reason whythey were created quadrupeds and polypods: God gave the more senselessof them the more support that they might be more attracted to theearth. And the most foolish of them, who trail their bodies entirelyupon the ground and have no longer any need of feet, he made withoutfeet to crawl upon the earth. The fourth class were the inhabitants ofthe water: these were made out of the most entirely senseless andignorant of all, whom the transformers did not think any longer worthyof pure respiration, because they possessed a soul which was madeimpure by all sorts of transgression; and instead of the subtle andpure medium of air, they gave them the deep and muddy sea to betheir element of respiration; and hence arose the race of fishes andoysters, and other aquatic animals, which have received the mostremote habitations as a punishment of their outlandish ignorance.These are the laws by which animals pass into one another, now, asever, changing as they lose or gain wisdom and folly.

We may now say that our discourse about the nature of the universehas an end. The world has received animals, mortal and immortal, andis fulfilled with them, and has become a visible animal containing thevisible-the sensible God who is the image of the intellectual, thegreatest, best, fairest, most perfect-the one only begotten heaven.

-THE END-