[117] Plato, Timæus, p. 92 B.
It is by such transitions (concludes the Platonic Timæus) that the different races of animals passed originally, and still continue to pass, into each other. The interchange is determined by the acquisition or loss of reason or irrationality.[118]
[118] Plato, Timæus, p. 92 B. καὶ κατὰ ταῦτα δὴ πάντα τότε καὶ νῦν διαμείβεται τὰ ζῶα εἰς ἄλληλα, νοῦ καὶ ἀνοίας ἀποβολῇ καὶ κτήσει μεταβαλλόμενα.
Large range of topics introduced in the Timæus.
The vast range of topics, included in this curious exposition, is truly remarkable: Kosmogony or Theogony, First Philosophy, Physics (resting upon Geometry and Arithmetic), Zoology, Physiology, Anatomy, Pathology, Therapeutics, mental as well as physical. Of all these, I have not been able to furnish more than scanty illustrations; but the whole are well worthy of study, as the conjectures of a great and ingenious mind in the existing state of knowledge and belief among the Greeks: and all the more worthy, because they form in many respects a striking contrast with the points of view prevalent in more recent times.
The Demiurgus of the Platonic Timæus — how conceived by other philosophers of the same century.
The position and functions of the Demiurgus, in the Timæus, form a peculiar phase in Grecian Philosophy, and even in the doctrine of Plato himself: for the theology and kosmology of the Timæus differ considerably from what we read in the Phædrus, Politikus, Republic, Leges, &c. The Demiurgus is presented in Timæus as a personal agent, pre-kosmical and extra-kosmical: but he appears only as initiating; he begets or fabricates, once for all, a most beautiful Kosmos (employing all the available material, so that nothing more could afterwards be added). The Kosmos having body and soul, is itself a God, but with many separate Gods resident within it, or attached to it. The Demiurgus then retires, leaving it to be peopled and administered by the Gods thus generated, or by its own soul. His acting and speaking is recounted in the manner of the ancient mythes: and many critics, ancient as well as modern, have supposed that he is intended by Plato only as a mythical personification of the Idea Boni: the construction described being only an ideal process, like the generation of a geometrical figure.[119] Whatever may have been Plato’s own intention, in this last sense his hypothesis was interpreted by his immediate successors, Speusippus and Xenokrates, as well as by Eudêmus.[120] Aristotle in his comments upon Plato takes little notice of the Demiurgus: the hypothesis (of a distinct personal constructive agent) did not fit into his principia of the Kosmos, and he probably ranked it among those mythical modes of philosophising which he expressly pronounces to be unworthy of serious criticism.[121] Various succeeding philosophers also, especially the Stoics, while they insisted much upon Providence, conceived this as residing in the Kosmos itself, and in the divine intra-kosmical agencies.
[119] Stallbaum, Proleg. ad Timæum, p. 47.
Zeller, Platonische Studien, pp. 207-215; also his Gesch. d. Phil. d. Griech. vol. ii. p. 508 seq. ed. 2nd; and Susemihl, Genetische Entwicklung der Platon. Philosophie, vol. ii. pp. 322-340. Ueberweg, Ueber die Platon. Welt-seele, p. 69; Brandis, Gesch. der Griech. Philos. ii. cx. pp. 357-365.