Timaeus
of air (for a film of moisture, sometimes earthy, sometimes pure,
is spread around the air) are hollow spheres of water; and those
of them which are pure, are transparent, and are called bubbles,
while those composed of the earthy liquid, which is in a state of
general agitation and effervescence, are said to boil or
ferment—of all these affections the cause is termed acid. And
there is the opposite affection arising from an opposite cause,
when the mass of entering particles, immersed in the moisture of
the mouth, is congenial to the tongue, and smooths and oils over
the roughness, and relaxes the parts which are unnaturally
contracted, and contracts the parts which are relaxed, and
disposes them all according to their nature;—that sort of remedy
of violent affections is pleasant and agreeable to every man, and
has the name sweet. But enough of this.
The faculty of smell does not admit of differences of kind; for
all smells are of a half-formed nature, and no element is so
proportioned as to have any smell. The veins about the nose are
too narrow to admit earth and water, and too wide to detain fire
and air; and for this reason no one ever perceives the smell of
any of them; but smells always proceed from bodies that are damp,
or putrefying, or liquefying, or evaporating, and are perceptible
only in the intermediate state, when water is changing into air
and air into water; and all of them are either vapour or mist.
That which is passing out of air into water is mist, and that
which is passing from water into air is vapour; and hence all
smells are thinner than water and thicker than air. The proof of
this is, that when there is any obstruction to the respiration,
and a man draws in his breath by force, then no smell filters
through, but the air without the smell alone penetrates.
Wherefore the varieties of smell have no name, and they have not
many, or definite and simple kinds; but they are distinguished
only as painful and pleasant, the one sort irritating and
disturbing the whole cavity which is situated between the head
and the navel, the other having a soothing influence, and
restoring this same region to an agreeable and natural condition.
In considering the third kind of sense, hearing, we must speak of
the causes in which it originates. We may in general assume sound
to be a blow which passes through the ears, and is transmitted by
means of the air, the brain, and the blood, to the soul, and that
hearing is the vibration of this blow, which begins in the head
and ends in the region of the liver. The sound which moves
swiftly is acute, and the sound which moves slowly is grave, and
that which is regular is equable and smooth, and the reverse is
harsh. A great body of sound is loud, and a small body of sound
the reverse. Respecting the harmonies of sound I must hereafter
speak.
There is a fourth class of sensible things, having many intricate
varieties, which must now be distinguished. They are called by
the general name of colours, and are a flame which emanates from
every sort of body, and has particles corresponding to the sense
of sight. I have spoken already, in what has preceded, of the
causes which generate sight, and in this place it will be natural
and suitable to give a rational theory of colours.
Of the particles coming from other bodies which fall upon the
sight, some are smaller and some are larger, and some are equal
to the parts of the sight itself. Those which are equal are
imperceptible, and we call them transparent. The larger produce
contraction, the smaller dilation, in the sight, exercising a
power akin to that of hot and cold bodies on the flesh, or of
astringent bodies on the tongue, or of those heating bodies which
we termed pungent. White and black are similar effects of
contraction and dilation in another sphere, and for this reason
have a different appearance. Wherefore, we ought to term white
that which dilates the visual ray, and the opposite of this is
black. There is also a swifter motion of a different sort of fire
which strikes and dilates the ray of sight until it reaches the
eyes, forcing a way through their passages and melting them, and
eliciting from them a union of fire and water which we call
tears, being itself an opposite fire which comes to them from an
opposite direction—the inner fire flashes forth like lightning,
and the outer finds a way in and is extinguished in the moisture,
and all sorts of colours are generated by the mixture. This
affection is termed dazzling, and the object which produces it is
called bright and flashing. There is another sort of fire which
is intermediate, and which reaches and mingles with the moisture
of the eye without flashing; and in this, the fire mingling with
the ray of the moisture, produces a colour like blood, to which
we give the name of red. A bright hue mingled with red and white
gives the colour called auburn (Greek). The law of proportion,
however, according to which the several colours are formed, even
if a man knew he would be foolish in telling, for he could not
give any necessary reason, nor indeed any tolerable or probable
explanation of them. Again, red, when mingled with black and
white, becomes purple, but it becomes umber (Greek) when the
colours are burnt as well as mingled and the black is more
thoroughly mixed with them. Flame-colour (Greek) is produced by a
union of auburn and dun (Greek), and dun by an admixture of black
and white; pale yellow (Greek), by an admixture of white and
auburn. White and bright meeting, and falling upon a full black,
become dark blue (Greek), and when dark blue mingles with white,
a light blue (Greek) colour is formed, as flame-colour with black
makes leek green (Greek). There will be no difficulty in seeing
how and by what mixtures the colours derived from these are made
according to the rules of probability. He, however, who should
attempt to verify all this by experiment, would forget the
difference of the human and divine nature. For God only has the
knowledge and also the power which are able to combine many
things into one and again resolve the one into many. But no man
either is or ever will be able to accomplish either the one or
the other operation.
These are the elements, thus of necessity then subsisting, which
the creator of the fairest and best of created things associated
with himself, when he made the self-sufficing and most perfect
God, using the necessary causes as his ministers in the
accomplishment of his work, but himself contriving the good in
all his creations. Wherefore we may distinguish two sorts of
causes, the one divine and the other necessary, and may seek for
the divine in all things, as far as our nature admits, with a
view to the blessed life; but the necessary kind only for the
sake of the divine, considering that without them and when
isolated from them, these higher things for which we look cannot
be apprehended or received or in any way shared by us.
Seeing, then, that we have now prepared for our use the various
classes of causes which are the material out of which the
remainder of our discourse must be woven, just as wood is the
material of the carpenter, let us revert in a few words to the
point at which we began, and then endeavour to add on a suitable
ending to the beginning of our tale.
As I said at first, when all things were in disorder God created
in each thing in relation to itself, and in all things in
relation to each other, all the measures and harmonies which they
could possibly receive. For in those days nothing had any
proportion except by accident; nor did any of the things which
now have names deserve to be named at all—as, for example, fire,
water, and the rest of the elements. All these the creator first
set in order, and out of them he constructed the universe, which
was a single animal comprehending in itself all other animals,
mortal and immortal. Now of the divine, he himself was the
creator, but the creation of the mortal he committed to his
offspring. And they, imitating him, received from him the
immortal principle of the soul; and around this they proceeded to
fashion a mortal body, and made it to be the vehicle of the soul,
and constructed within the body a soul of another nature which
was mortal, subject to terrible and irresistible
affections,—first of all, pleasure, the greatest incitement to
evil; then, pain, which deters from good; also rashness and fear,
two foolish counsellors, anger hard to be appeased, and hope
easily led astray;—these they mingled with irrational sense and
with all-daring love according to necessary laws, and so framed
man. Wherefore, fearing to pollute the divine any more than was
absolutely unavoidable, they gave to the mortal nature a separate
habitation in another part of the body, placing the neck between
them to be the isthmus and boundary, which they constructed
between the head and breast, to keep them apart. And in the
breast, and in what is termed the thorax, they encased the mortal
soul; and as the one part of this was superior and the other
inferior they divided the cavity of the thorax into two parts, as
the women’s and men’s apartments are divided in houses, and
placed the midriff to be a wall of partition between them. That
part of the inferior soul which is endowed with courage and
passion and loves contention they settled nearer the head, midway
between the midriff and the neck, in order that it might be under
the rule of reason and might join with it in controlling and
restraining the desires when they are no longer willing of their
own accord to obey the word of command issuing from the citadel.
The heart, the knot of the veins and the fountain of the blood
which races through all the limbs, was set in the place of guard,
that when the might of passion was roused by reason making
proclamation of any wrong assailing them from without or being
perpetrated by the desires within, quickly the whole power of
feeling in the body, perceiving these commands and threats, might
obey and follow through every turn and alley, and thus allow the
principle of the best to have the command in all of them. But the
gods, foreknowing that the palpitation of the heart in the
expectation of danger and the swelling and excitement of passion
was caused by fire, formed and implanted as a supporter to the
heart the lung, which was, in the first place, soft and
bloodless, and also had within hollows like the pores of a
sponge, in order that by receiving the breath and the drink, it
might give coolness and the power of respiration and alleviate
the heat. Wherefore they cut the air-channels leading to the
lung, and placed the lung about the heart as a soft spring, that,
when passion was rife within, the heart, beating against a