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And this the express words of Plato declare.
‘For this is my opinion,’ saith he, ‘in short, that
being, place, and generation were three distinct things
even before the heavens were created.’
1 By place he
means matter, as being the seat and receptacle; by being or existence, the intelligible nature; and by generation, the world not being yet created, he designs only that
substance which was subject to change and motion, disposed between the forming cause and the thing formed,
transmitting hither those shapes and figures which were
there contrived and moulded. For which reason it was
called divisible; there being a necessity of distributing
sense to the sensitive, and imagination to the imaginative
faculty. For the sensitive motion, being proper to the
soul, directs itself to that which is outwardly sensible. As
for the understanding, it was fixed and immovable of itself,
but being settled in the soul and becoming its lord and
governor, it turns upon itself, and accomplishes a circular
motion about that which is always permanent, chiefly laboring to apply itself to the eternally durable substance.
[p. 354]
With great difficulty therefore did they admit a conjunction,
till the divisible at length intermixing with the indivisible,
and the restlessly hurried with the sleepy and motionless,
constrained the Other to meet and join with the Same.
Yet the Other was not motion, as neither was the Same
stability, but the principle of distinction and diversity.
For both the one and the other proceed from a different
principle; the Same from the unit, the Other from the
duad; and these were first intermixed with the soul, being
fastened and bound together by number, proportion, and
harmonical mediums; so that the Other being riveted into
the Same begets diversity and disagreement; and the
Same being fermented into the Other produces order.
And this is apparent from the first powers of the soul,
which are judgment and motion. Motion immediately
shows itself in the heavens, giving us an example of
diversity in identity by the circumvolution of the fixed
stars, and of identity in diversity by the order of the
planets. For in them the Same bears the chiefest sway;
in terrestrial bodies, the contrary principle. Judgment
has two principles,—understanding from the Same, to
judge of things in general, and sense from the Other, to
judge of things in particular. Reason is a mixture of
both, becoming intellect in reference to things intelligible,
and opinion in things subject to sense; making use of the
interdisposed organs of imagination and memory, of which
these in the Same produce the Other, and those in the
Other make the Same. For understanding is the motion
of the considerative faculty about that which is permanent
and stable. Opinion is a continuance of the perceptive
faculty upon that which is continually in motion. But as
for fancy or imagination, being a connection of opinion
with sense, the Same has placed it in the memory; and
the Other moves it again in the difference between past
and present, touching at the same time upon diversity
and identity.
[p. 355]
1 Timaeus, p. 52 D.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 2.
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