[113] Plato, Timæus, pp. 90 D, 91 C-D. The phrase of Plato in describing the newly introduced mode of procreation — ὡς εἰς ἄρουραν τὴν μήτραν ἀόρατα ὑπὸ σμικρότητος καὶ ἀδιάπλαστα ζῶα κατασπείραντες — is remarkable, as it might be applied to the spermatozoa, which nevertheless he cannot have known.
Construction of women, birds, quadrupeds, fishes, &c., all from the degradation of primitive man.
We have thus — says the Platonic Timæus in approaching his conclusion — gone through all those matters which we promised at the beginning, from the first construction of the Kosmos to the genesis of man. We must now devote a few words to the other animals. All of these derive their origin from man, by successive degradations. The first transition is from man into woman. Men whose lives had been characterised by cowardice or injustice, were after death and in their second birth born again as women. It was then that the Gods planted in us the sexual impulse, reconstructing the bodily organism with suitable adjustment, on the double pattern, male and female.[114]
[114] Plat. Tim. p. 91 D. Whoever compares the step of marked degeneration here indicated — in passing from men to women — with that which is affirmed by Plato in the fifth book of the Republic about the character, attributes, and capacities of women, will recognise a material difference between the two.
Such was the genesis of women, by a partial transformation and diversification of the male structure.
We next come to birds; who are likewise a degraded birth or formation, derived from one peculiar mode of degeneracy in man: hair being transmuted into feathers and wings. Birds were formed from the harmless, but light, airy, and superficial men; who, though carrying their minds aloft to the study of kosmical phenomena, studied them by visual observation and not by reason, foolishly imagining that they had discovered the way of reaching truth.[115]
[115] Plato, Timæus, p. 91 E.
The more brutal land animals proceeded from men totally destitute of philosophy, who neither looked up to the heavens nor cared for celestial objects: from men making no use whatever of the rotations of their encephalic soul, but following exclusively the guidance of the lower soul in the trunk. Through such tastes and occupations, both their heads and their anterior limbs became dragged down to the earth by the force of affinity. Moreover, when the rotations of the encephalic soul, from want of exercise, became slackened and fell into desuetude, the round form of the cranium was lost, and converted into an oblong or some other form. These men thus degenerated into quadrupeds and multipeds: the Gods furnishing a greater number of feet in proportion to the stupidity of each, in order that its approximations to earth might be multiplied. To some of the more stupid, however, the Gods gave no feet nor limbs at all; constraining them to drag the whole length of their bodies along the ground, and to become Reptiles.[116]
[116] Plato, Timæus, pp. 91-92.
Out of the most stupid and senseless of mankind, by still greater degeneracy, the Gods formed Fishes or Aquatic Animals:— the fourth and lowest genus, after Men, Birds, Land-Animals. This race of beings, from their extreme want of mind, were not considered worthy to live on earth, or to respire thin and pure air. They were condemned to respire nothing but deep and turbid water, many of them, as oysters, and other descriptions of shellfish, being fixed down at the lowest depth or bottom.[117]