Plato next enumerates the several varieties of each element — fire, water, earth.[77] He then proceeds to mention the attributes, properties, affections, &c., of each: which he characterises as essentially relative to a sentient Subject: nothing being absolute except the constituent geometrical figures. You cannot describe these attributes (he says) without assuming (what has not yet been described) the sensitive or mortal soul, to which they are relative.[78] Assuming this provisionally, Plato gives account of Hot and Cold, Hard and Soft, Heavy and Light, Rough and Smooth, &c.[79] Then he describes, first, the sensations of pleasure and pain, common to the whole body — next those of the special senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch.[80] These descriptions are very curious and interesting. I am compelled to pass them over by want of space, and shall proceed to the statements respecting the two mortal souls and the containing organism — which belong to a vein more analogous to that of the other Platonic dialogues.
[77] Plato, Timæus, pp. 58-61 C.
[78] Plato, Timæus, p. 61 C-D. Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ὑπάρχειν αἴσθησιν δεῖ τοῖς λεγομένοις (γένεσιν) ἀεί· σαρκὸς δὲ καὶ τῶν περὶ σάρκα γένεσιν, ψυχῆς τε ὅσον θνητόν, οὕπω διεληλύθαμεν. Τυγχάνει δὲ οὔτε ταῦτα χωρὶς τῶν περὶ τὰ παθήματα ὅσα αἰσθητικά, οὔτ’ ἐκεῖνα ἄνευ τούτων δυνατὰ ἱκανῶς λεχθῆναι· τὸ δὲ ἅμα σχεδὸν οὐ δυνατόν. Ὑποθετέον δὴ πρότερον θάτερα, τὰ δ’ ὕστερα ὑποτεθέντα ἐπάνιμεν αὖθις. Ἵνα οὖν ἑξῆς τὰ παθήματα λέγηται τοῖς γένεσιν, ἔστω πρότερα ἡμῖν τὰ περὶ σῶμα καὶ ψυχὴν ὄντα.
[79] Plato, Tim. pp. 62-64 B. Demokritus appears to have held on this point an opinion approaching to that of Plato. See Democr. Frag. ed. Mullach, pp. 204-215: Aristot. Metaph. A. p. 985, b. 15; De Sensu, s. 62-65; Sextus Empiric. adv. Math. vii. 135.
Περὶ μὲν οὖν βαρέος καὶ κούφου καὶ σκληροῦ καὶ μαλακοῦ, ἐν τούτοις ἀφορίζει — τῶν δ’ ἄλλων αἰσθητῶν οὐδενὸς εἶναι φύσιν, ἀλλὰ πάντα πάθη τῆς αἰσθήσεως ἀλλοιουμένης. We may remark that Plato includes hardness and softness, the different varieties of resistance, among the secondary or relative qualities of matter; all that he seems to conceive as absolute are extension and figure, the geometrical conception of matter. In the view of most modern philosophers, resistance is considered as the most obviously and undeniably absolute of all the attributes of matter, as that which serves to prove that matter itself is absolute. Dr. Johnson refuted the doctrine of Berkeley by knocking a stick against the ground; and a similar refutation is adopted in words by Reid and Stewart (see Mill’s System of Logic, Book vi. ad finem, also Book i. ch. 3, s. 7-8). To me the fact appealed to by Johnson appears an evidence in favour of Berkeley’s theory rather than against it. The Resistant (ὃ παρέχει προσβολὴν καὶ ἐπαφήν τινα, Plato, Sophist. p. 246 A) can be understood only as a correlate of something which is resisted: the fact of sense called Resistance is an indivisible fact, involving the implication of the two. In the first instance it is the resistance experienced to our own motions (A. Bain, The Senses and the Intellect, p. 91, 3rd ed.), and thus involves the feeling of our own spontaneous muscular energy.
The Timæus of Plato is not noticed by Sir W. Hamilton in his very learned and instructive Dissertation on the Primary and Secondary Qualities of Body (notes to his edition of Reid’s Works, p. 826), though it bears upon his point more than the Theætêtus, which he mentions.
[80] Plato, Timæus, pp. 65-69 E.
Construction of man imposed by the Demiurgus upon the secondary Gods. Triple Soul. Distribution thereof in the body.
The Demiurgus, after having constructed the entire Kosmos, together with the generated Gods, as well as Necessity would permit — imposed upon these Gods the task of constructing Man: the second best of the four varieties of animals whom he considered it necessary to include in the Kosmos. He furnished to them as a basis an immortal rational soul (diluted remnant from the soul of the Kosmos); with which they were directed to combine two mortal souls and a body.[81] They executed their task as well as the conditions of the problem admitted. They were obliged to include in the mortal souls pleasure and pain, audacity and fear, anger, hope, appetite, sensation, &c., with all the concomitant mischiefs. By such uncongenial adjuncts the immortal rational soul was unavoidably defiled. The constructing Gods however took care to defile it as little as possible.[82] They reserved the head as a separate abode for the immortal soul: planting the mortal soul apart from it in the trunk, and establishing the neck as an isthmus of separation between the two. Again the mortal soul was itself not single but double: including two divisions, a better and a worse. The Gods kept the two parts separate; placing the better portion in the thoracic cavity nearer to the head, and the worse portion lower down, in the abdominal cavity: the two being divided from each other by the diaphragm, built across the body as a wall of partition: just as in a dwelling-house, the apartments of the women are separated from those of the men. Above the diaphragm and near to the neck, was planted the energetic, courageous, contentious, soul; so placed as to receive orders easily from the head, and to aid the rational soul in keeping under constraint the mutinous soul of appetite, which was planted below the diaphragm.[83] The immortal soul[84] was fastened or anchored in the brain, the two mortal souls in the line of the spinal marrow continuous with the brain: which line thus formed the thread of connection between the three. The heart was established as an outer fortress for the exercise of influence by the immortal soul over the other two. It was at the same time made the initial point of the veins, the fountain from whence the current of blood proceeded to pass forcibly through the veins round to all parts of the body. The purpose of this arrangement is, that when the rational soul denounces some proceeding as wrong (either on the part of others without, or in the appetitive soul within), it may stimulate an ebullition of anger in the heart, and may transmit from thence its exhortations and threats through the many small blood channels to all the sensitive parts of the body: which may thus be rendered obedient everywhere to the orders of our better nature.[85]
[81] Plato, Timæus, p. 69 C.