De animae procreatione in Timaeo

But now let us take a draught of the corresponding composition of the soul from the structure of the body of the universe. There we find fire and earth, whose nature is such as not to admit of mixture one with another but with great difficulty, or rather is altogether obstinately refractory to mixture and constancy. God therefore, placing air and water in the middle between both,—the air next the fire, the water next the earth,—first of all tempered the middlemost one with another, and next, by the assistance of these two, he brought the two extreme elements not only to mix with the middlemost, but also to a mutual closure or conjunction between themselves. Then he drew together those contrary powers and opposing extremes, the Same and the Other, not immediately, the one adjoining to the other, but placing other substances between; the indivisible next the Same, and the divisible next the Other, disposing each to each in convenient order, and mixing the extremes with the middlemost. After which manner he interweaved and tissued the whole into the form and composition of the soul, completing, as far as it was possible, similitude out of things different and various, and one out of many. Therefore it is alleged by some, that Plato erroneously affirmed the nature of the Other to be an enemy to mixture, as being not only capable to receive it, but a friend of change. Whereas that should have been rather said of the nature of the Same; which, being stable and an utter adversary to mutability, is so far from an easy and willing condescension to mixture, that it flies and abhors it, to the end it may preserve itself pure and free from alteration. But they who make these objections against Plato betray their own ignorance, not understanding that the Same is the idea (or essential form) of those things that always continue in the same state and condition, and that the Other is the idea of those things which are subject to be variously affected; and that it is the

peculiar nature of the one to disjoin and separate into many parts whatever it happens to lay hold upon, and of the other to cement and assimilate scattered substances, till they resume one particular form and efficacy.

And these are the powers and virtues of the soul of the universe. And when they once enter into the organs of corruptible bodies, being themselves incorruptible, there the form of the binary and boundless principle shows itself most briskly, while that of the unmixed and purer principle lies as it were dormant in obscurity. And thus it happens, that a man shall rarely observe any human passion or motion of the understanding, void of reason, where there shall not something appear either of desire or emulation, joy or grief. Several philosophers therefore will have the passions to be so many sorts of reasonings, seeing that desire, grief, and anger are all the effects of judgment. Others allege the virtues themselves to be derived from passions; fortitude depending on fear, temperance on voluptuousness, and justice on love of gain. Now the soul being both speculative and practical, contemplating as well generals as particulars, and seeming to comprehend the one by the assistance of the intellect and the other by the aid of sense, common reason, which encounters the Same in the Other and the Other in the Same, endeavors by certain limits and distinctions to separate one from many and the divisible from the indivisible; but she cannot accomplish her design nor be purely in one or the other, in regard the principles are so oddly interwoven and intermixed and confusedly huddled together.

For this reason did God constitute a receptacle for the Same and the Other, out of the indivisible and divisible substance, to the end there might be order in variety. Now this was generation. For without this the Same could have no variety, and therefore no motion or generation; and the Other could have no order, and therefore no consistence

or generation. For should we grant the Same to be different from the Other, and the Other to be the Same with itself, such a commixture would produce nothing generative, but would want a third something, like matter, to receive both and be disposed of by both. And this is that matter which God first composed, when he bounded the movable nature of bodies by the steadfastness of things intelligible.

Now then, as voice, merely voice, is only an insignificant and brutish noise, but speech is the expression of the mind by significant utterance; as harmony consists of sounds and intervals,—a sound being always one and the same, and an interval being the difference and diversity of sounds, while both being mixed together produce air and melody;—thus the passive nature of the soul was without limits and unstable, but afterwards became determinate, when limits were set and a certain form was given to the divisible and manifold variety of motion. Thus having comprised the Same and the Other, by the similitudes and dissimilitudes of numbers which produce concord out of disagreement, it becomes the life of the world, sober and prudent, harmony itself, and reason overruling necessity mixed with persuasion. This necessity is by most men called fate or destiny, by Empedocles friendship and discord, by Heraclitus the opposite straining harmony of the world, as of a bow or harp, by Parmenides light and darkness, by Anaxagoras mind and infinity, by Zoroaster God and Daemon, naming one Oromasdes, the other Arimanius. Though as for Euripides, he makes use of the disjunctive erroneously for the copulative, where he says,

Jove, whether he be

Necessity, that Nature’s force controls,

Or the intelligence of human souls.

For, indeed, the powers which bear dominion over the

universe are necessity and wisdom. This is that therefore which the Egyptians intimate in their fables, feigning that, when Horus was punished and dismembered, he bequeathed his spirit and blood to his father, but his flesh and his fat to his mother. There is no part of the soul which remains pure and unmixed, or separate from the rest; for, according to the opinion of Heraclitus, harmony latent is of greater value than that which is visible, as being that wherein the blending Deity concealed and sunk all varieties and dissimilitudes. Nevertheless, there appears in the irrational part a turbulent and boisterous temerity; in the rational part, an orderly and well-marshalled prudence; in the sensitive part, the constraint of necessity; but in the understanding, entire and perfect command of itself. The limiting and bounding power sympathizes with the whole and the indivisible, by reason of the nearness of their relations; on the other side, the dividing power fixes itself upon particulars, by virtue of the divisible substance; and the whole rejoices at the mutation of the Same by means of the Other, as occasion requires. In the like manner, the various inclinations of men to virtue and vice, to pleasure and toil, as also the enthusiasms and raptures of lovers, the combats of honor with lustful desires, plainly demonstrate the mixture of the divine and impassible with the moral and corporeal part; of which Plato himself calls the one concupiscence of pleasures, natural to ourselves; the other an opinion introduced from without, aspiring to the chiefest good. For passible qualities of the soul arise from herself; but she participates of understanding, as being infused from without, by the more worthy principle.