A certain Ecphantus, a Syracusan, said that a true knowledge of the things that are could not be got. But he defines, as he thinks, that the first bodies are indivisible and that there are three differences[96] between them, to wit, size, shape and power. And the number of them is limited and not boundless; but that these bodies are moved neither by weight nor by impact, but by a divine power which he calls p. 31. Nous and Psyche. Now the pattern of this is the cosmos, wherefore it has become spherical in form by Divine power. And that the earth in the midst of the cosmos is moved round its own centre from west to east.[97]
14. About Hippo.
But Hippo of Rhegium[98] said that the principles were cold, like water, and heat, like fire. And that the fire came from the water, and, overcoming the power of its parent, constructed the cosmos. But he said that the soul was sometimes brain and sometimes water; for the seed also seems to us to be from moisture and from it he says the soul is born.
These things, then, we seem to have sufficiently set forth. Wherefore, as we have now separately run through the opinions of the physicists, it seems fitting that we return to Socrates and Plato, who most especially preferred (the study of) ethics.
15. About Socrates.
Now Socrates became a hearer of Archelaus the physicist, and giving great honour to the maxim “Know thyself” and having established a large school, held Plato to be the most competent of all his disciples. He left no writings p. 32. behind him; but Plato being impressed with all his wisdom[99] established the teaching combining physics, ethics and dialectics. But what Plato laid down is this:—
16. About Plato.
Plato makes the principles of the universe to be God, matter and (the) model. He says that God is the maker and orderer of this universe and its Providence.[100] That matter is that which underlies all things, which matter he calls a recipient and a nurse.[101] From which, after it had been set in order, came the four elements of which the cosmos is constructed, to wit, fire, air, earth and water,[102] whence in turn all the other so-called compound things, viz., animals and plants have been constructed. But the model is the thought of God which Plato also calls ideas, to which giving heed as to an image in the soul,[103] God fashioned[104] all p. 33. things. He said that God was without body or form and could only be comprehended by wise men; but that matter is potentially body, but not yet actively. For that being itself without form or quality, it receives forms and qualities to become body.[105] That matter, therefore, is a principle and the same is coeval with God, and the cosmos is unbegotten. For, he says, it constructed itself out of itself.[106] And in all ways it is like the unbegotten and is imperishable. But in so far as body[107] is assumed to be composed of many qualities and ideas, it is so far begotten and perishable. But some Platonists mixed together the two opinions making up some such parable as this: to wit, that, as a wagon can remain undestroyed for ever if repaired part by part, as even though the parts perish every time, the wagon remains complete; so, the cosmos, although it perish part by part, is yet reconstructed and compensated for the parts taken away, and remains eternal.
Some again say that Plato declared God to be one, unbegotten and imperishable, as he says in the Laws:—“God, p. 34. therefore, as the old story goes, holds the beginning and end and middle of all things that are.”[108] Thus he shows Him to be one through His containing all things. But others say that Plato thought that there are many gods without limitation[109] when he said, “God of gods, of whom I am the fashioner and father.”[110] And yet others that he thinks them subject to limitation when he says: “Great Zeus, indeed, driving his winged chariot in heaven;”[111] and when he gives the pedigree[112] of the children of Uranos and Gê. Others again that he maintained the gods to be originated and that because they were originated they ought to perish utterly, but that by the will of God they remain imperishable as he says in the passage before quoted, “God of gods, of whom I am the fashioner and father, and who are formed by my will indissoluble.” So that if He wished them to be dissolved, dissolved they would easily be. But he accepts the nature of demons, and says some are good, and some bad.