SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SPINDLE OF THE FATES.
9. This brings us to a consideration of the spindle, which, according to the ancients, is turned by the Fates, and by which Plato signifies[224] that which, in the evolution of the world, moves, and that which is immovable. According to (Plato), it is the Fates, and their mother Necessity, which turn this spindle, and which impress it with a rotary motion in the generation of each being. It is by this motion that begotten beings arrive at generation. In the Timaeus[225] the (Intelligence, or) divinity which has created the universe gives the (immortal) principle of the soul, (the reasonable soul), and the deities which revolve in the heaven add (to the immortal principle of the soul) the violent passions which subject us to Necessity, namely, angers, desires, sufferings, and pleasures; in short, they furnish us with that other kind of soul (the animal nature, or vegetable soul) from which they derive these passions. Plato thus seems to subject us to the stars, by hinting that we receive from them our souls,[227] subordinating to the sway of Necessity when we descend here below, both ourselves and our morals, and through these, the "actions" and "passions"[228] which are derived from the passional habit[215] of the soul (the animal nature).[229]