De animae procreatione in Timaeo

Since it is your opinion that it would be requisite for me to collect together what I have discoursed and written dispersedly in several treatises explaining, as we apprehended his sense and meaning, what opinion Plato had concerning the soul, as requiring a particular commentary by itself; therefore I have compiled this discourse, which asks for your consideration and pardon not only because the matter itself is by no means easy to be handled, but also because the doctrines herein contained are somewhat contrary to those held by most of the Platonic philosophers. And I will first rehearse the words as they run originally in the text itself of Timaeus.[*](Timaeus, p. 35 A–B.)

There being one substance not admitting of division, but continuing still the same, and another liable to be divided among several bodies, out of both these he produced for a middle mixture a third sort of Substance, partaking of the nature of the Same and of the nature of the Other, and placed it in the midst between that which was indivisible and that which was subject to be corporeally divided. Then taking

all three, he blended them into one form, forcibly adapting to the Same the nature of the Other, not readily condescending to a mixture. Now when he had thus mixed them with the Substance, and reduced the three into one, he again divided this whole matter into so many parts as were thought to be necessary; every one of these parts being composed of the Same, the Other, and the Substance And thus he began his division.

By the way, it would be an endless toil to recite the contentions and disputes that have from hence arisen among his interpreters, and to you indeed superfluous, who are not ignorant yourselves of the greatest part.

But seeing that Xenocrates won to his opinions several of the most eminent philosophers, while he defined the substance of the soul to be number moved by itself; and that many adhered to Crantor the Solian, who affirmed the soul to consist partly of an essence perceptible to the mind, partly of a nature concerned with sensible things and subject to opinions; I am apt to believe that the perspicuity of these matters clearly dilucidated will afford you a fair entrance into the knowledge of the rest.

Nor does either of the two conjectures require many words of explanation. For the one side pretends that by the mixture of the’ divisible and indivisible substance no other thing is meant than the generation or original of number, seeing that the unit is undividable but multitude is subject to division; however, that out of these is begot number, unity terminating plurality and putting a period to infinity, which they call the unlimited binary. This binary Zaratas, the scholar of Pythagoras, named the mother, but the unit the father of number; and therefore he believed those numbers were the best which approached nearest in resemblance to the unit. Nevertheless, this number cannot be said to be the soul; for it neither has the power to move, neither can it be moved. But the Same and the

Other being blended together, of which one is the original of motion and mutation, the other of rest and stability, from these two springs the soul, which is no less active or passive itself to stay or to be stayed, than to move or to be moved.

But the followers of Crantor, supposing the proper function of the soul to consist in judging of those things which are discernible to the understanding and those which are liable to sense, as also of the differences and similitudes of these things, as well in themselves as in reference one to another, allege the soul to be composed of all, to the end she may have a true knowledge of the whole. Now the things of which the All is composed are fourfold,—the intelligible nature, always immutable and still the same, and the sensitive nature, which is passive and subject to alteration; and also the nature of the Same, and the nature of the Other, in regard the two former in some measure participate also of diversity and identity.

All these philosophers likewise equally hold that the soul neither derives its beginning from time nor is the product of generation, but that it is endued with several faculties and virtues, into which Plato, as it were, melting and dissolving its substance for contemplation’s sake, supposes it in his discourse to have had its original from procreation and mixture.

The same was his opinion concerning the world; for he knew it to be uncreated and without end, but not perceiving it so easy to apprehend how the structure was reared, or by what order and government supported, unless by admitting its beginning and the causes thereto concurring, he followed that method to instruct himself. These things being thus generally by them laid down, Eudorus will allow to neither side any share of probability; and indeed to me they both seem to have wandered from the opinion of Plato, if we intend to make the most likely rule our

guide,—which is not to advance our own conceits, but to come as close as we can to his sense and meaning. Now as to this same mixture (as they call it) of the intelligible and sensitive substance, no reason appears why it should be more the original of the soul than of any other thing that ye can name. For the whole world itself and every one of its parts pretend to no other composition than of a sensitive and an intelligible substance, of which the one affords matter and foundation, the other form and figure to the whole mass. And then again, whate’er there is of material substance, framed and structured by participation and assimilation of the intelligible nature is not only to be felt but visible to the eye; whenas the soul still soars above the reach of all natural apprehension. Neither did Plato ever assert the soul to be number, but a perpetually self-moving nature, the fountain and principle of motion. Only he embellished and adorned the substance of it with number, proportion, and harmony; as being a subject capable of receiving the most goodly form which those ornaments could produce. So that I cannot believe it to be the same thing to compose the soul according to number, and to affirm the soul to be number itself. Nor can it be said to be harmony because harmoniously composed, as he has clearly demonstrated in his Treatise of the Soul. But plain it is, that those philosophers understood not the meaning of the Same and the Other. For they tell us how the Same contributes rest, the Other motion toward the generation of the soul. Though Plato himself, in his treatise entitled the Sophist, disposes and distinguishes Essence, the Same, the Other, together with Motion and Rest, as being five things altogether differing one from another and void of mutual affinity.