The Athenian — adverting to the circumstances of human life generally, as full of toil and suffering, with few and transient moments of happiness — remarks that none except the wise have any chance of happiness; and that few can understand what real wisdom is, though every one presumes that there must be something of the kind discoverable.[483] He first enumerates what it is not. It is not any of the useful arts — husbandry, house-building, metallurgy, weaving, pottery, hunting, &c.: nor is it prophecy, or the understanding of omens: nor any of the elegant arts — music, poetry, painting: nor the art of war, or navigation, or medicine, or forensic eloquence: nor does it consist in the natural endowments of quick wit and good memory.[484] True wisdom is something different from all these. It consists in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, leading to a full comprehension of the regular movements of the Kosmos — combined with a correct religious creed as to the divine attributes of the Kosmos and its planetary bodies which are all pervaded and kept in harmonious rotation by divine, in-dwelling, soul or mind.[485] It is the God Uranus (or Olympus, or Kosmos), with the visible Gods included therein, who furnishes to us not only the gifts of the seasons and the growth of food, but also varied intelligence, especially the knowledge of number, without which no other knowledge would be attainable.[486] Number and proportion are essential conditions of every variety of art. The regular succession of night and day, and the regularly changing phases of the moon — the comparison of months with the year — first taught us to count, and to observe the proportions of numbers to each other.[487]
[483] Plato, Epinom. pp. 973-974.
[484] Plato, Epinom. pp. 975-976.
[485] Plato, Epinom. pp. 976-977.
[486] Plato, Epinom. pp. 977-978.
[487] Plato, Epinom. pp. 978-979.
Theological view of Astronomy — Divine Kosmos — Soul more ancient and more sovereign than Body.
The Athenian now enters upon the directly theological point of view, and re-asserts the three articles of orthodoxy which he had laid down in the tenth book of Leges: together with the other point of faith also — That Soul or Mind is older than body: soul is active and ruling — body, passive and subject. An animal is a compound of both. There are five elementary bodies — fire, air, æther, water, earth[488] — which the kosmical soul moulded, in varying proportions, so as to form different animals and plants. Man, animals, and plants were moulded chiefly of earth, yet with some intermixture of the other elements: the stars were moulded chiefly from fire, having the most beautiful bodies, endowed with divine and happy souls, and immortal, or very long-lived.[489] Next to the stars were moulded the Dæmons, out of æther, and inhabitants of that element: after them, the animals inhabiting air, and Nymphs inhabiting water. These three occupy intermediate place between the stars above and man below.[490] They serve as media of communication between man and the Gods: and also for the diffusion of thought and intelligence among all parts of the Kosmos.[491] The Gods of the ordinary faith — Zeus, Hêrê, and others — must be left to each person’s disposition, if he be inclined to worship them: but the great visible Kosmos, and the sidereal Gods, must be solemnly exalted and sanctified, with prayer and the holiest rites.[492] Those astronomers who ignore this divine nature, and profess to explain their movements by physical or mechanical forces, are guilty of grave impiety. The regularity of their movements is a proof of their divine nature, not a proof of the contrary, as some misguided persons affirm.[493]
[488] Plato, Epinom. pp. 980-981. We know, from a curious statement of Xenokrates (see Fragm. of his work Περὶ τοῦ Πλάτωνος βίου, cited by Simplikius, ad Aristot. Physic. p. 427, a. 17, Schol. Brandis), that this quintuple elementary scale was a doctrine of Plato. But it is not the doctrine of the Timæus. The assertion of Xenokrates (good evidence) warrants us in believing that Plato altered his views after the composition of Timæus, and that his latest opinions are represented in the Epinomis. Zeller indeed thinks that the dodekahedron in the Timæus might be construed as a fifth element, but this is scarcely tenable. Zeller, Philos. der Griechen, vol. ii. p. 513, ed. 2nd.
[489] Plat. Epinom. pp. 981-982.