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Timaeus

P >> Plato, translated by B. Jowett. >> Timaeus




The Timaeus also contains an anticipation of the stoical life according to
nature. Man contemplating the heavens is to regulate his erring life
according to them. He is to partake of the repose of nature and of the
order of nature, to bring the variable principle in himself into harmony
with the principle of the same. The ethics of the Timaeus may be summed up
in the single idea of 'law.' To feel habitually that he is part of the
order of the universe, is one of the highest ethical motives of which man
is capable. Something like this is what Plato means when he speaks of the
soul 'moving about the same in unchanging thought of the same.' He does
not explain how man is acted upon by the lesser influences of custom or of
opinion; or how the commands of the soul watching in the citadel are
conveyed to the bodily organs. But this perhaps, to use once more
expressions of his own, 'is part of another subject' or 'may be more
suitably discussed on some other occasion.'

There is no difficulty, by the help of Aristotle and later writers, in
criticizing the Timaeus of Plato, in pointing out the inconsistencies of
the work, in dwelling on the ignorance of anatomy displayed by the author,
in showing the fancifulness or unmeaningness of some of his reasons. But
the Timaeus still remains the greatest effort of the human mind to conceive
the world as a whole which the genius of antiquity has bequeathed to us.

...

One more aspect of the Timaeus remains to be considered--the mythological
or geographical. Is it not a wonderful thing that a few pages of one of
Plato's dialogues have grown into a great legend, not confined to Greece
only, but spreading far and wide over the nations of Europe and reaching
even to Egypt and Asia? Like the tale of Troy, or the legend of the Ten
Tribes (Ewald, Hist. of Isr.), which perhaps originated in a few verses of
II Esdras, it has become famous, because it has coincided with a great
historical fact. Like the romance of King Arthur, which has had so great a
charm, it has found a way over the seas from one country and language to
another. It inspired the navigators of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries; it foreshadowed the discovery of America. It realized the
fiction so natural to the human mind, because it answered the enquiry about
the origin of the arts, that there had somewhere existed an ancient
primitive civilization. It might find a place wherever men chose to look
for it; in North, South, East, or West; in the Islands of the Blest; before
the entrance of the Straits of Gibraltar, in Sweden or in Palestine. It
mattered little whether the description in Plato agreed with the locality
assigned to it or not. It was a legend so adapted to the human mind that
it made a habitation for itself in any country. It was an island in the
clouds, which might be seen anywhere by the eye of faith. It was a subject
especially congenial to the ponderous industry of certain French and
Swedish writers, who delighted in heaping up learning of all sorts but were
incapable of using it.

M. Martin has written a valuable dissertation on the opinions entertained
respecting the Island of Atlantis in ancient and modern times. It is a
curious chapter in the history of the human mind. The tale of Atlantis is
the fabric of a vision, but it has never ceased to interest mankind. It
was variously regarded by the ancients themselves. The stronger heads
among them, like Strabo and Longinus, were as little disposed to believe in
the truth of it as the modern reader in Gulliver or Robinson Crusoe. On
the other hand there is no kind or degree of absurdity or fancy in which
the more foolish writers, both of antiquity and of modern times, have not
indulged respecting it. The Neo-Platonists, loyal to their master, like
some commentators on the Christian Scriptures, sought to give an
allegorical meaning to what they also believed to be an historical fact.
It was as if some one in our own day were to convert the poems of Homer
into an allegory of the Christian religion, at the same time maintaining
them to be an exact and veritable history. In the Middle Ages the legend
seems to have been half-forgotten until revived by the discovery of
America. It helped to form the Utopia of Sir Thomas More and the New
Atlantis of Bacon, although probably neither of those great men were at all
imposed upon by the fiction. It was most prolific in the seventeenth or in
the early part of the eighteenth century, when the human mind, seeking for
Utopias or inventing them, was glad to escape out of the dulness of the
present into the romance of the past or some ideal of the future. The
later forms of such narratives contained features taken from the Edda, as
well as from the Old and New Testament; also from the tales of missionaries
and the experiences of travellers and of colonists.

The various opinions respecting the Island of Atlantis have no interest for
us except in so far as they illustrate the extravagances of which men are
capable. But this is a real interest and a serious lesson, if we remember
that now as formerly the human mind is liable to be imposed upon by the
illusions of the past, which are ever assuming some new form.

When we have shaken off the rubbish of ages, there remain one or two
questions of which the investigation has a permanent value:--

1. Did Plato derive the legend of Atlantis from an Egyptian source? It
may be replied that there is no such legend in any writer previous to
Plato; neither in Homer, nor in Pindar, nor in Herodotus is there any
mention of an Island of Atlantis, nor any reference to it in Aristotle, nor
any citation of an earlier writer by a later one in which it is to be
found. Nor have any traces been discovered hitherto in Egyptian monuments
of a connexion between Greece and Egypt older than the eighth or ninth
century B.C. It is true that Proclus, writing in the fifth century after
Christ, tells us of stones and columns in Egypt on which the history of the
Island of Atlantis was engraved. The statement may be false--there are
similar tales about columns set up 'by the Canaanites whom Joshua drove
out' (Procop.); but even if true, it would only show that the legend, 800
years after the time of Plato, had been transferred to Egypt, and
inscribed, not, like other forgeries, in books, but on stone. Probably in
the Alexandrian age, when Egypt had ceased to have a history and began to
appropriate the legends of other nations, many such monuments were to be
found of events which had become famous in that or other countries. The
oldest witness to the story is said to be Crantor, a Stoic philosopher who
lived a generation later than Plato, and therefore may have borrowed it
from him. The statement is found in Proclus; but we require better
assurance than Proclus can give us before we accept this or any other
statement which he makes.

Secondly, passing from the external to the internal evidence, we may remark
that the story is far more likely to have been invented by Plato than to
have been brought by Solon from Egypt. That is another part of his legend
which Plato also seeks to impose upon us. The verisimilitude which he has
given to the tale is a further reason for suspecting it; for he could
easily 'invent Egyptian or any other tales' (Phaedrus). Are not the words,
'The truth of the story is a great advantage,' if we read between the
lines, an indication of the fiction? It is only a legend that Solon went
to Egypt, and if he did he could not have conversed with Egyptian priests
or have read records in their temples. The truth is that the introduction
is a mosaic work of small touches which, partly by their minuteness, and
also by their seeming probability, win the confidence of the reader. Who
would desire better evidence than that of Critias, who had heard the
narrative in youth when the memory is strongest at the age of ten from his
grandfather Critias, an old man of ninety, who in turn had heard it from
Solon himself? Is not the famous expression--'You Hellenes are ever
children and there is no knowledge among you hoary with age,' really a
compliment to the Athenians who are described in these words as 'ever
young'? And is the thought expressed in them to be attributed to the
learning of the Egyptian priest, and not rather to the genius of Plato? Or
when the Egyptian says--'Hereafter at our leisure we will take up the
written documents and examine in detail the exact truth about these
things'--what is this but a literary trick by which Plato sets off his
narrative? Could any war between Athens and the Island of Atlantis have
really coincided with the struggle between the Greeks and Persians, as is
sufficiently hinted though not expressly stated in the narrative of Plato?
And whence came the tradition to Egypt? or in what does the story consist
except in the war between the two rival powers and the submersion of both
of them? And how was the tale transferred to the poem of Solon? 'It is
not improbable,' says Mr. Grote, 'that Solon did leave an unfinished
Egyptian poem' (Plato). But are probabilities for which there is not a
tittle of evidence, and which are without any parallel, to be deemed worthy
of attention by the critic? How came the poem of Solon to disappear in
antiquity? or why did Plato, if the whole narrative was known to him, break
off almost at the beginning of it?

While therefore admiring the diligence and erudition of M. Martin, we
cannot for a moment suppose that the tale was told to Solon by an Egyptian
priest, nor can we believe that Solon wrote a poem upon the theme which was
thus suggested to him--a poem which disappeared in antiquity; or that the
Island of Atlantis or the antediluvian Athens ever had any existence except
in the imagination of Plato. Martin is of opinion that Plato would have
been terrified if he could have foreseen the endless fancies to which his
Island of Atlantis has given occasion. Rather he would have been
infinitely amused if he could have known that his gift of invention would
have deceived M. Martin himself into the belief that the tradition was
brought from Egypt by Solon and made the subject of a poem by him. M.
Martin may also be gently censured for citing without sufficient
discrimination ancient authors having very different degrees of authority
and value.

2. It is an interesting and not unimportant question which is touched upon
by Martin, whether the Atlantis of Plato in any degree held out a guiding
light to the early navigators. He is inclined to think that there is no
real connexion between them. But surely the discovery of the New World was
preceded by a prophetic anticipation of it, which, like the hope of a
Messiah, was entering into the hearts of men? And this hope was nursed by
ancient tradition, which had found expression from time to time in the
celebrated lines of Seneca and in many other places. This tradition was
sustained by the great authority of Plato, and therefore the legend of the
Island of Atlantis, though not closely connected with the voyages of the
early navigators, may be truly said to have contributed indirectly to the
great discovery.

The Timaeus of Plato, like the Protagoras and several portions of the
Phaedrus and Republic, was translated by Cicero into Latin. About a
fourth, comprehending with lacunae the first portion of the dialogue, is
preserved in several MSS. These generally agree, and therefore may be
supposed to be derived from a single original. The version is very
faithful, and is a remarkable monument of Cicero's skill in managing the
difficult and intractable Greek. In his treatise De Natura Deorum, he also
refers to the Timaeus, which, speaking in the person of Velleius the
Epicurean, he severely criticises.

The commentary of Proclus on the Timaeus is a wonderful monument of the
silliness and prolixity of the Alexandrian Age. It extends to about thirty
pages of the book, and is thirty times the length of the original. It is
surprising that this voluminous work should have found a translator (Thomas
Taylor, a kindred spirit, who was himself a Neo-Platonist, after the
fashion, not of the fifth or sixteenth, but of the nineteenth century
A.D.). The commentary is of little or no value, either in a philosophical
or philological point of view. The writer is unable to explain particular
passages in any precise manner, and he is equally incapable of grasping the
whole. He does not take words in their simple meaning or sentences in
their natural connexion. He is thinking, not of the context in Plato, but
of the contemporary Pythagorean philosophers and their wordy strife. He
finds nothing in the text which he does not bring to it. He is full of
Porphyry, Iamblichus and Plotinus, of misapplied logic, of misunderstood
grammar, and of the Orphic theology.

Although such a work can contribute little or nothing to the understanding
of Plato, it throws an interesting light on the Alexandrian times; it
realizes how a philosophy made up of words only may create a deep and
widespread enthusiasm, how the forms of logic and rhetoric may usurp the
place of reason and truth, how all philosophies grow faded and discoloured,
and are patched and made up again like worn-out garments, and retain only a
second-hand existence. He who would study this degeneracy of philosophy
and of the Greek mind in the original cannot do better than devote a few of
his days and nights to the commentary of Proclus on the Timaeus.

A very different account must be given of the short work entitled 'Timaeus
Locrus,' which is a brief but clear analysis of the Timaeus of Plato,
omitting the introduction or dialogue and making a few small additions. It
does not allude to the original from which it is taken; it is quite free
from mysticism and Neo-Platonism. In length it does not exceed a fifth
part of the Timaeus. It is written in the Doric dialect, and contains
several words which do not occur in classical Greek. No other indication
of its date, except this uncertain one of language, appears in it. In
several places the writer has simplified the language of Plato, in a few
others he has embellished and exaggerated it. He generally preserves the
thought of the original, but does not copy the words. On the whole this
little tract faithfully reflects the meaning and spirit of the Timaeus.

From the garden of the Timaeus, as from the other dialogues of Plato, we
may still gather a few flowers and present them at parting to the reader.
There is nothing in Plato grander and simpler than the conversation between
Solon and the Egyptian priest, in which the youthfulness of Hellas is
contrasted with the antiquity of Egypt. Here are to be found the famous
words, 'O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are ever young, and there is not an
old man among you'--which may be compared to the lively saying of Hegel,
that 'Greek history began with the youth Achilles and left off with the
youth Alexander.' The numerous arts of verisimilitude by which Plato
insinuates into the mind of the reader the truth of his narrative have been
already referred to. Here occur a sentence or two not wanting in Platonic
irony (Greek--a word to the wise). 'To know or tell the origin of the
other divinities is beyond us, and we must accept the traditions of the men
of old time who affirm themselves to be the offspring of the Gods--that is
what they say--and they must surely have known their own ancestors. How
can we doubt the word of the children of the Gods? Although they give no
probable or certain proofs, still, as they declare that they are speaking
of what took place in their own family, we must conform to custom and
believe them.' 'Our creators well knew 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 nails for many purposes; wherefore they fashioned
in men at their first creation the rudiments of nails.' Or once more, let
us reflect on two serious passages in which the order of the world is
supposed to find a place in the human soul and to infuse harmony into it.
'The soul, when touching anything that has essence, whether dispersed in
parts or undivided, is stirred through all her powers to declare the
sameness or difference of that thing and some other; and to what
individuals are related, and by what affected, and in what way and how and
when, both in the world of generation and in the world of immutable being.
And when reason, which works with equal truth, whether she be in the circle
of the diverse or of the same,--in voiceless silence holding her onward
course in the sphere of the self-moved,--when reason, I say, is hovering
around the sensible world, and when the circle of the diverse also moving
truly imparts the intimations of sense to the whole soul, then arise
opinions and beliefs sure and certain. But when reason is concerned with
the rational, and the circle of the same moving smoothly declares it, then
intelligence and knowledge are necessarily perfected;' where, proceeding in
a similar path of contemplation, he supposes the inward and the outer world
mutually to imply each other. 'God invented and gave us sight to the end
that we might behold the courses of intelligence in the heaven, and apply
them to the courses of our own intelligence which are akin to them, the
unperturbed to the perturbed; and that we, learning them and partaking of
the natural truth of reason, might imitate the absolutely unerring courses
of God and regulate our own vagaries.' Or let us weigh carefully some
other profound thoughts, such as the following. 'He who neglects education
walks lame to the end of his life, and returns imperfect and good for
nothing to the world below.' 'The father and maker of all this universe is
past finding out; and even if we found him, to tell of him to all men would
be impossible.' 'Let me tell you then why the Creator made this world of
generation. He was good, and the good can never have jealousy of anything.
And being free from jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like
himself as they could be. This is in the truest sense the origin of
creation and of the world, as we shall do well in believing on the
testimony of wise men: God desired that all things should be good and
nothing bad, so far as this was attainable.' This is the leading thought
in the Timaeus, just as the IDEA of Good is the leading thought of the
Republic, the one expression describing the personal, the other the
impersonal Good or God, differing in form rather than in substance, and
both equally implying to the mind of Plato a divine reality. The slight
touch, perhaps ironical, contained in the words, 'as we shall do well in
believing on the testimony of wise men,' is very characteristic of Plato.



TIMAEUS.


PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Critias, Timaeus, Hermocrates.


SOCRATES: One, two, three; but where, my dear Timaeus, is the fourth of
those who were yesterday my guests and are to be my entertainers to-day?

TIMAEUS: He has been taken ill, Socrates; for he would not willingly have
been absent from this gathering.

SOCRATES: Then, if he is not coming, you and the two others must supply
his place.

TIMAEUS: Certainly, and we will do all that we can; having been handsomely
entertained by you yesterday, those of us who remain should be only too
glad to return your hospitality.

SOCRATES: Do you remember what were the points of which I required you to
speak?

TIMAEUS: We remember some of them, and you will be here to remind us of
anything which we have forgotten: or rather, if we are not troubling you,
will you briefly recapitulate the whole, and then the particulars will be
more firmly fixed in our memories?

SOCRATES: To be sure I will: the chief theme of my yesterday's discourse
was the State--how constituted and of what citizens composed it would seem
likely to be most perfect.

TIMAEUS: Yes, Socrates; and what you said of it was very much to our mind.

SOCRATES: Did we not begin by separating the husbandmen and the artisans
from the class of defenders of the State?

TIMAEUS: Yes.

SOCRATES: And when we had given to each one that single employment and
particular art which was suited to his nature, we spoke of those who were
intended to be our warriors, and said that they were to be guardians of the
city against attacks from within as well as from without, and to have no
other employment; they were to be merciful in judging their subjects, of
whom they were by nature friends, but fierce to their enemies, when they
came across them in battle.

TIMAEUS: Exactly.

SOCRATES: We said, if I am not mistaken, that the guardians should be
gifted with a temperament in a high degree both passionate and
philosophical; and that then they would be as they ought to be, gentle to
their friends and fierce with their enemies.

TIMAEUS: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And what did we say of their education? Were they not to be
trained in gymnastic, and music, and all other sorts of knowledge which
were proper for them?

TIMAEUS: Very true.

SOCRATES: And being thus trained they were not to consider gold or silver
or anything else to be their own private property; they were to be like
hired troops, receiving pay for keeping guard from those who were protected
by them--the pay was to be no more than would suffice for men of simple
life; and they were to spend in common, and to live together in the
continual practice of virtue, which was to be their sole pursuit.

TIMAEUS: That was also said.

SOCRATES: Neither did we forget the women; of whom we declared, that their
natures should be assimilated and brought into harmony with those of the
men, and that common pursuits should be assigned to them both in time of
war and in their ordinary life.

TIMAEUS: That, again, was as you say.

SOCRATES: And what about the procreation of children? Or rather was not
the proposal too singular to be forgotten? for all wives and children were
to be in common, to the intent that no one should ever know his own child,
but they were to imagine that they were all one family; those who were
within a suitable limit of age were to be brothers and sisters, those who
were of an elder generation parents and grandparents, and those of a
younger, children and grandchildren.

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

SOCRATES: And do you also remember how, with a view of securing as far as
we could the best breed, we said that the chief magistrates, male and
female, should contrive secretly, by the use of certain lots, so to arrange
the nuptial meeting, that the bad of either sex and the good of either sex
might pair with their like; and there was to be no quarrelling on this
account, for they would imagine that the union was a mere accident, and was
to be attributed to the lot?

TIMAEUS: I remember.

SOCRATES: And you remember how we said that the children of the good
parents were to be educated, and the children of the bad secretly dispersed
among the inferior citizens; and while they were all growing up the rulers
were to be on the look-out, and to bring up from below in their turn those
who were worthy, and those among themselves who were unworthy were to take
the places of those who came up?

TIMAEUS: True.

SOCRATES: Then have I now given you all the heads of our yesterday's
discussion? Or is there anything more, my dear Timaeus, which has been
omitted?

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

SOCRATES: I should like, before proceeding further, to tell you how I feel
about the State which we have described. I might compare myself to a
person who, on beholding beautiful animals either created by the painter's
art, or, better still, alive but at rest, is seized with a desire of seeing
them in motion or engaged in some struggle or conflict to which their forms
appear suited; this is my feeling about the State which we have been
describing. There are conflicts which all cities undergo, and I should
like to hear some one tell of our own city carrying on a struggle against
her neighbours, and how she went out to war in a becoming manner, and when
at war showed by the greatness of her actions and the magnanimity of her
words in dealing with other cities a result worthy of her training and
education. Now I, Critias and Hermocrates, am conscious that I myself
should never be able to celebrate the city and her citizens in a befitting
manner, and I am not surprised at my own incapacity; to me the wonder is
rather that the poets present as well as past are no better--not that I
mean to depreciate them; but every one can see that they are a tribe of
imitators, and will imitate best and most easily the life in which they
have been brought up; while that which is beyond the range of a man's
education he finds hard to carry out in action, and still harder adequately
to represent in language. I am aware that the Sophists have plenty of
brave words and fair conceits, but I am afraid that being only wanderers
from one city to another, and having never had habitations of their own,
they may fail in their conception of philosophers and statesmen, and may
not know what they do and say in time of war, when they are fighting or
holding parley with their enemies. And thus people of your class are the
only ones remaining who are fitted by nature and education to take part at
once both in politics and philosophy. Here is Timaeus, of Locris in Italy,
a city which has admirable laws, and who is himself in wealth and rank the
equal of any of his fellow-citizens; he has held the most important and
honourable offices in his own state, and, as I believe, has scaled the
heights of all philosophy; and here is Critias, whom every Athenian knows
to be no novice in the matters of which we are speaking; and as to
Hermocrates, I am assured by many witnesses that his genius and education
qualify him to take part in any speculation of the kind. And therefore
yesterday when I saw that you wanted me to describe the formation of the
State, I readily assented, being very well aware, that, if you only would,
none were better qualified to carry the discussion further, and that when
you had engaged our city in a suitable war, you of all men living could
best exhibit her playing a fitting part. When I had completed my task, I
in return imposed this other task upon you. You conferred together and
agreed to entertain me to-day, as I had entertained you, with a feast of
discourse. Here am I in festive array, and no man can be more ready for
the promised banquet.

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