Timaeus | Page 4

the Neo-Platonists had a method of interpretation which could elicit any
meaning out of any words. They were really incapable of distinguishing between the
opinions of one philosopher and another--between Aristotle and Plato, or between the
serious thoughts of Plato and his passing fancies. They were absorbed in his theology and
were under the dominion of his name, while that which was truly great and truly
characteristic in him, his effort to realize and connect abstractions, was not understood by
them at all. Yet the genius of Plato and Greek philosophy reacted upon the East, and a
Greek element of thought and language overlaid and partly reduced to order the chaos of
Orientalism. And kindred spirits, like St. Augustine, even though they were acquainted
with his writings only through the medium of a Latin translation, were profoundly

affected by them, seeming to find 'God and his word everywhere insinuated' in them
(August. Confess.)
There is no danger of the modern commentators on the Timaeus falling into the
absurdities of the Neo-Platonists. In the present day we are well aware that an ancient
philosopher is to be interpreted from himself and by the contemporary history of thought.
We know that mysticism is not criticism. The fancies of the Neo-Platonists are only
interesting to us because they exhibit a phase of the human mind which prevailed widely
in the first centuries of the Christian era, and is not wholly extinct in our own day. But
they have nothing to do with the interpretation of Plato, and in spirit they are opposed to
him. They are the feeble expression of an age which has lost the power not only of
creating great works, but of understanding them. They are the spurious birth of a
marriage between philosophy and tradition, between Hellas and the East--(Greek) (Rep.).
Whereas the so-called mysticism of Plato is purely Greek, arising out of his imperfect
knowledge and high aspirations, and is the growth of an age in which philosophy is not
wholly separated from poetry and mythology.
A greater danger with modern interpreters of Plato is the tendency to regard the Timaeus
as the centre of his system. We do not know how Plato would have arranged his own
dialogues, or whether the thought of arranging any of them, besides the two 'Trilogies'
which he has expressly connected; was ever present to his mind. But, if he had arranged
them, there are many indications that this is not the place which he would have assigned
to the Timaeus. We observe, first of all, that the dialogue is put into the mouth of a
Pythagorean philosopher, and not of Socrates. And this is required by dramatic propriety;
for the investigation of nature was expressly renounced by Socrates in the Phaedo. Nor
does Plato himself attribute any importance to his guesses at science. He is not at all
absorbed by them, as he is by the IDEA of good. He is modest and hesitating, and
confesses that his words partake of the uncertainty of the subject (Tim.). The dialogue is
primarily concerned with the animal creation, including under this term the heavenly
bodies, and with man only as one among the animals. But we can hardly suppose that
Plato would have preferred the study of nature to man, or that he would have deemed the
formation of the world and the human frame to have the same interest which he ascribes
to the mystery of being and not-being, or to the great political problems which he
discusses in the Republic and the Laws. There are no speculations on physics in the other
dialogues of Plato, and he himself regards the consideration of them as a rational pastime
only. He is beginning to feel the need of further divisions of knowledge; and is becoming
aware that besides dialectic, mathematics, and the arts, there is another field which has
been hitherto unexplored by him. But he has not as yet defined this intermediate territory
which lies somewhere between medicine and mathematics, and he would have felt that
there was as great an impiety in ranking theories of physics first in the order of
knowledge, as in placing the body before the soul.
It is true, however, that the Timaeus is by no means confined to speculations on physics.
The deeper foundations of the Platonic philosophy, such as the nature of God, the
distinction of the sensible and intellectual, the great original conceptions of time and
space, also appear in it. They are found principally in the first half of the dialogue. The
construction of the heavens is for the most part ideal; the cyclic year serves as the
connection between the world of absolute being and of generation, just as the number of
population in the Republic is the expression or symbol of the