Timaeus
proportions of 1:2:4:8 and 1:3:9:27, or compounds of them, the
laws of the world seemed to be more than half revealed. They were
also capable of infinite subdivision—a wonder and also a puzzle
to the ancient thinker (Rep.). They were not, like being or
essence, mere vacant abstractions, but admitted of progress and
growth, while at the same time they confirmed a higher sentiment
of the mind, that there was order in the universe. And so there
began to be a real sympathy between the world within and the
world without. The numbers and figures which were present to the
mind’s eye became visible to the eye of sense; the truth of
nature was mathematics; the other properties of objects seemed to
reappear only in the light of number. Law and morality also found
a natural expression in number and figure. Instruments of such
power and elasticity could not fail to be ‘a most gracious
assistance’ to the first efforts of human intelligence.
There was another reason why numbers had so great an influence
over the minds of early thinkers—they were verified by
experience. Every use of them, even the most trivial, assured men
of their truth; they were everywhere to be found, in the least
things and the greatest alike. One, two, three, counted on the
fingers was a ‘trivial matter (Rep.), a little instrument out of
which to create a world; but from these and by the help of these
all our knowledge of nature has been developed. They were the
measure of all things, and seemed to give law to all things;
nature was rescued from chaos and confusion by their power; the
notes of music, the motions of the stars, the forms of atoms, the
evolution and recurrence of days, months, years, the military
divisions of an army, the civil divisions of a state, seemed to
afford a ‘present witness’ of them—what would have become of man
or of the world if deprived of number (Rep.)? The mystery of
number and the mystery of music were akin. There was a music of
rhythm and of harmonious motion everywhere; and to the real
connexion which existed between music and number, a fanciful or
imaginary relation was superadded. There was a music of the
spheres as well as of the notes of the lyre. If in all things
seen there was number and figure, why should they not also
pervade the unseen world, with which by their wonderful and
unchangeable nature they seemed to hold communion?
Two other points strike us in the use which the ancient
philosophers made of numbers. First, they applied to external
nature the relations of them which they found in their own minds;
and where nature seemed to be at variance with number, as for
example in the case of fractions, they protested against her
(Rep.; Arist. Metaph.). Having long meditated on the properties
of 1:2:4:8, or 1:3:9:27, or of 3, 4, 5, they discovered in them
many curious correspondences and were disposed to find in them
the secret of the universe. Secondly, they applied number and
figure equally to those parts of physics, such as astronomy or
mechanics, in which the modern philosopher expects to find them,
and to those in which he would never think of looking for them,
such as physiology and psychology. For the sciences were not yet
divided, and there was nothing really irrational in arguing that
the same laws which regulated the heavenly bodies were partially
applied to the erring limbs or brain of man. Astrology was the
form which the lively fancy of ancient thinkers almost
necessarily gave to astronomy. The observation that the lower
principle, e.g. mechanics, is always seen in the higher, e.g. in
the phenomena of life, further tended to perplex them. Plato’s
doctrine of the same and the other ruling the courses of the
heavens and of the human body is not a mere vagary, but is a
natural result of the state of knowledge and thought at which he
had arrived.
When in modern times we contemplate the heavens, a certain amount
of scientific truth imperceptibly blends, even with the cursory
glance of an unscientific person. He knows that the earth is
revolving round the sun, and not the sun around the earth. He
does not imagine the earth to be the centre of the universe, and
he has some conception of chemistry and the cognate sciences. A
very different aspect of nature would have been present to the
mind of the early Greek philosopher. He would have beheld the
earth a surface only, not mirrored, however faintly, in the glass
of science, but indissolubly connected with some theory of one,
two, or more elements. He would have seen the world pervaded by
number and figure, animated by a principle of motion, immanent in
a principle of rest. He would have tried to construct the
universe on a quantitative principle, seeming to find in endless
combinations of geometrical figures or in the infinite variety of
their sizes a sufficient account of the multiplicity of
phenomena. To these a priori speculations he would add a rude
conception of matter and his own immediate experience of health
and disease. His cosmos would necessarily be imperfect and
unequal, being the first attempt to impress form and order on the
primaeval chaos of human knowledge. He would see all things as in
a dream.
The ancient physical philosophers have been charged by Dr.
Whewell and others with wasting their fine intelligences in wrong
methods of enquiry; and their progress in moral and political
philosophy has been sometimes contrasted with their supposed
failure in physical investigations. ‘They had plenty of ideas,’
says Dr. Whewell, ‘and plenty of facts; but their ideas did not
accurately represent the facts with which they were acquainted.’
This is a very crude and misleading way of describing ancient
science. It is the mistake of an uneducated person—uneducated,
that is, in the higher sense of the word—who imagines every one
else to be like himself and explains every other age by his own.
No doubt the ancients often fell into strange and fanciful
errors: the time had not yet arrived for the slower and surer
path of the modern inductive philosophy. But it remains to be
shown that they could have done more in their age and country; or
that the contributions which they made to the sciences with which
they were acquainted are not as great upon the whole as those
made by their successors. There is no single step in astronomy as
great as that of the nameless Pythagorean who first conceived the
world to be a body moving round the sun in space: there is no
truer or more comprehensive principle than the application of
mathematics alike to the heavenly bodies, and to the particles of
matter. The ancients had not the instruments which would have
enabled them to correct or verify their anticipations, and their
opportunities of observation were limited. Plato probably did
more for physical science by asserting the supremacy of
mathematics than Aristotle or his disciples by their collections
of facts. When the thinkers of modern times, following Bacon,
undervalue or disparage the speculations of ancient philosophers,
they seem wholly to forget the conditions of the world and of the
human mind, under which they carried on their investigations.
When we accuse them of being under the influence of words, do we
suppose that we are altogether free from this illusion? When we
remark that Greek physics soon became stationary or extinct, may
we not observe also that there have been and may be again periods
in the history of modern philosophy which have been barren and
unproductive? We might as well maintain that Greek art was not
real or great, because it had nihil simile aut secundum, as say
that Greek physics were a failure because they admire no
subsequent progress.
The charge of premature generalization which is often urged
against ancient philosophers is really an anachronism. For they
can hardly be said to have generalized at all. They may be said
more truly to have cleared up and defined by the help of
experience ideas which they already possessed. The beginnings of
thought about nature must always have this character. A true
method is the result of many ages of experiment and observation,
and is ever going on and enlarging with the progress of science
and knowledge. At first men personify nature, then they form
impressions of nature, at last they conceive ‘measure’ or laws of
nature. They pass out of mythology into philosophy. Early science
is not a process of discovery in the modern sense; but rather a
process of correcting by observation, and to a certain extent
only, the first impressions of nature, which mankind, when they
began to think, had received from poetry or language or
unintelligent sense. Of all scientific truths the greatest and
simplest is the uniformity of nature; this was expressed by the
ancients in many ways, as fate, or necessity, or measure, or
limit. Unexpected events, of which the cause was unknown to them,
they attributed to chance (Thucyd.). But their conception of
nature was never that of law interrupted by exceptions,—a
somewhat unfortunate metaphysical invention of modern times,
which is at variance with facts and has failed to satisfy the
requirements of thought.
Section 3.
Plato’s account of the soul is partly mythical or figurative, and
partly literal. Not that either he or we can draw a line between
them, or say, ‘This is poetry, this is philosophy’; for the
transition from the one to the other is imperceptible. Neither
must we expect to find in him absolute consistency. He is apt to
pass from one level or stage of thought to another without always
making it apparent that he is changing his ground. In such
passages we have to interpret his meaning by the general spirit
of his writings. To reconcile his inconsistencies would be
contrary to the first principles of criticism and fatal to any
true understanding of him.
There is a further difficulty in explaining this part of the
Timaeus—the natural order of thought is inverted. We begin with
the most abstract, and proceed from the abstract to the concrete.
We are searching into things which are upon the utmost limit of
human intelligence, and then of a sudden we fall rather heavily
to the earth. There are no intermediate steps which lead from one
to the other. But the abstract is a vacant form to us until
brought into relation with man and nature. God and the world are
mere names, like the Being of the Eleatics, unless some human
qualities are added on to them. Yet the negation has a kind of
unknown meaning to us. The priority of God and of the world,
which he is imagined to have created, to all other existences,
gives a solemn awe to them. And as in other systems of theology
and philosophy, that of which we know least has the greatest
interest to us.
There is no use in attempting to define or explain the first God