Position and character of the Pythagorean Timæus.
Timæus is extolled by Sokrates as combining the character of a statesman with that of a philosopher: as being of distinguished wealth and family in his native city (the Epizephyrian Lokri), where he had exercised the leading political functions:— and as having attained besides, the highest excellence in science, astronomical as well as physical.[4] We know from other sources (though Plato omits to tell us so, according to his usual undefined manner of designating contemporaries) that he was of the Pythagorean school. Much of the exposition assigned to him is founded on Pythagorean principles, though blended by Plato with other doctrines, either his own or borrowed elsewhere. Timæus undertakes to requite Sokrates by giving a discourse respecting “The Nature of the Universe”; beginning at the genesis of the Kosmos, and ending with the constitution of man.[5] This is to serve as an historical or mythical introduction to the Platonic Republic recently described; wherein Sokrates had set forth the education and discipline proper for man when located as an inhabitant of the earth. Neither during the exposition of Timæus, nor after it, does Sokrates make any remark. But the commencement of the Kritias (which is evidently intended as a second part or continuation of the Timæus) contains, first, a prayer from Timæus that the Gods will pardon the defects of his preceding discourse and help him to amend them — next an emphatic commendation bestowed by Sokrates upon the discourse: thus supplying that recognition which is not found in the first part.[6]
[4] Plato, Timæus, pp. 20 A, 27 A.
[5] Plato, Timæus, p. 27 A. ἔδοξε γὰρ ἡμῖν Τίμαιον μέν, ἅτε ἀστρονομικώτατον ἡμῶν, καὶ περὶ φύσεως τοῦ παντὸς εἰδέναι μάλιστα ἔργον πεποιημένον, πρῶτον λέγειν ἀρχόμενον ἀπὸ τῆς τοῦ κόσμου γενέσεως, τελευτᾷν δὲ εἰς ἀνθρώπων φύσιν.
[6] Plato, Kritias, p. 108 B.
Poetical imagination displayed by Plato. He pretends to nothing more than probability. Contrast with Sokrates, Isokrates, Xenophon.
In this Hymn of the Universe (to use a phrase of the rhetor Menander[7] respecting the Platonic Timæus) the prose of Plato is quite as much the vehicle of poetical imagination as the hexameters of Hesiod, Empedokles, or Parmenides. The Gods and Goddesses, whom Timæus invokes at the commencement,[8] supply him with superhuman revelations, like the Muses to Hesiod, or the Goddess of Wisdom to Parmenides. Plato expressly recognises the multiplicity of different statements current, respecting the Gods and the generation of the Universe. He claims no superior credibility for his own. He professes to give us a new doctrine, not less probable than the numerous dissentient opinions already advanced by others, and more acceptable to his own mind. He bids us be content with such a measure of probability, because the limits of our human nature preclude any fuller approach to certainty.[9] It is important to note the modest pretensions here unreservedly announced by Plato as to the conviction and assent of hearers:— so different from the confidence manifested in the Republic, where he hires a herald to proclaim his conclusion — and from the overbearing dogmatism which we read in his Treatise De Legibus, where he is providing a catechism for the schooling of citizens, rather than proofs to be sifted by opponents. He delivers, respecting matters which he admits to be unfathomable, the theory most in harmony with his own religious and poetical predispositions, which he declares to be as probable as any other yet proclaimed. The Xenophontic Sokrates, who disapproved all speculation respecting the origin and structure of the Kosmos, would probably have granted this equal probability, and equal absence of any satisfactory grounds of preferential belief — both to Plato on one side and to the opposing theorists on the other. And another intelligent contemporary, Isokrates, would probably have considered the Platonic Timæus as one among the same class of unprofitable extravagancies, to which he assigns the theories of Herakleitus, Empedokles, Alkmæon, Parmenides, and others.[10] Plato himself (in the Sophistês)[11] characterises the theories of these philosophers as fables recited to an audience of children, without any care to ensure a rational comprehension and assent. They would probably have made the like criticism upon his Timæus. While he treats it as fable to apply to the Gods the human analogy of generation and parentage — they would have considered it only another variety of fable, to apply to them the equally human analogy of constructive fabrication or mixture of ingredients. The language of Xenophon shows that he agreed with his master Sokrates in considering such speculations as not merely unprofitable, but impious.[12] And if the mission from the Gods — constituting Sokrates Cross-Examiner General against the prevailing fancy of knowledge without the reality of knowledge — drove him to court perpetual controversy with the statesmen, poets, and Sophists of Athens; the same mission would have compelled him, on hearing the sweeping affirmations of Timæus, to apply the test of his Elenchus, and to appear in his well-known character of confessed[13] but inquisitive ignorance. The Platonic Timæus is positively anti-Sokratic. It places us at the opposite or dogmatic pole of Plato’s character.[14]
[7] Menander, De Encomiis, i. 5, p. 39. Compare Karsten, De Empedoclis Vitâ, p. 72; De Parmenidis Vitâ, p. 21.
[8] Plato, Timæus, p. 27 D; Hesiod, Theogon, 22-35-105.
[9] Plato, Timæus, pp. 29 D, 28 D, 59 C-D, 68 C, 72 D. κατ’ ἐμὴν δόξαν — παρὰ τῆς ἐμῆς ψήφου (p. 52 D). In many parts of the dialogue he repeats that he is delivering his own opinion — that he is affirming what is probable. In the Phædon, however, we find that εἰκότες λόγοι are set aside as deceptive and dangerous, Phædon, p. 92 D. In the remarkable passage of the Timæus, p. 48 C-D, Plato intimates that he will not in the present discourse attempt to go to the bottom of the subject — τὴν μὲν περὶ ἁπάντων εἴτε ἀρχὴν εἴτε ἀρχὰς εἴτε ὅπῃ δοκεῖ τούτων πέρι, τὸ νῦν οὐ ῥητέον — but that he will confine himself to εἰκότες λόγοι — τὸ δὲ κατ’ ἀρχὰς ῥηθὲν διαφυλάττων, τὴν τῶν εἰκότων λόγων δύναμιν, πειράσομαι μηδενὸς ἧττον εἰκότα, μᾶλλον δὲ καὶ ἔμπροσθεν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς περὶ ἑκάστων καὶ ξυμπάντων λέγειν.