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WHAT IS THE REASON THAT GOD BADE SOCRATES TO ACT THE MIDWIFE'S PART TO OTHERS, BUT CHARGED HIMSELF NOT TO GENERATE; AS HE SAYS IN THEAETETUS?
FOR he would never have used the name of God in
such a merry, jesting manner, though Plato in that book
makes Socrates several times to talk with great boasting
and arrogance, as he does now. There are many, dear
friend, so affected towards me, that they are ready even to
bite me, when I offer to cure them of the least madness.
For they will not be persuaded that I do it out of goodwill, because they are ignorant that no God bears ill-will
to man, and that therefore I wish ill to no man; but I cannot allow myself either to stand in a lie or to stifle the
truth.
For our mind is God,
and
as Heraclitus, Man's genius is a Deity
? Or did some
divine cause or some Daemon or other impart this way of
philosophizing to Socrates, whereby always interrogating
others, he cleared them of pride, error, and ignorance,
and of being troublesome both to themselves and to
others? For about that time there happened to be in
Greece several sophisters; to these some young men paid
great sums of money, for which they purchased a strong
Now, however useful a thing judgment is, it is mightily impeached by the begetting of a man's own fancies.
For the lover is blinded with the thing loved; and nothing
of a man's own is so beloved as is the opinion and discourse which he has begotten. And the distribution of
children, said to be the justest, in respect of discourses is
the unjustest; for there a man must take his own, but
here a man must choose the best, though it be another
man's. Therefore he that has children of his own, is a
worse judge of other men's; it being true, as the sophister
said well, The Eleans would be the most proper judges
of the Olympic games, were no Eleans gamesters.
So he
that would judge of disputations cannot be just, if he
either seeks the bays for himself, or is himself antagonist
to either of the antagonists. For as the Grecian captains,
when they were to decide by their suffrages who had behaved himself the best, every man of them voted for himself; so there is not a philosopher of them all but would do
the like, besides those that acknowledge, like Socrates, that
they can say nothing that is their own; and these only are
the pure uncorrupt judges of the truth. For as the air in
the ears, unless it be still and void of noise in itself, with
out any sound or buzzing, does not exactly take sounds;
so the philosophical judgment in disputations, if it be disturbed and obstreperous within, is hardly comprehensive
of what is said without. For our familiar and inbred
Furthermore, if men can comprehend and know
nothing, God did justly interdict Socrates the procreation
of false and unstable discourses, which are like wind-eggs,
and bid him convince others who were of any other
opinion. And reasoning, which rids us of the greatest of
evils, error and vanity of mind, is none of the least benefit
to us; For God has not granted this to the Esculapians.
WHY DOES HE CALL THE SUPREME GOD FATHER AND MAKER OF,
ALL THINGS?
Is it because he is (as Homer calls him) of created
Gods and men the Father, and of brutes and things that
have no soul the maker? If Chrysippus may be credited,
he is not properly styled the father of the afterbirth who
supplied the seed, although it springs from the seed. Or
has he figuratively called the maker of the world the
father of it? In his Convivium he calls Phaedrus the
father of the amatorious discourse which he had introduced; and so in his Phaedrusfather of
noble children,
when he had been the occasion of many
excellent discourses about philosophical matters. Or is
there any difference between a father and a maker? Or
between procreation and making? For as what is procreated is also made, but not the contrary; so he that
procreated did also make, for the procreation of an animal
is the making of it. Now the work of a maker—as of
a builder, a weaver, a musical-instrument maker, or a
statuary—is altogether distinct and separate from its
author; but the principle and power of the procreator is
implanted in the progeny, and contains his nature, the
progeny being a piece pulled off the procreator. Since
therefore the world is neither like a piece of potter's work
nor joiner's work, but there is a great share of life and
divinity in it, which God from himself communicated to
and mixed with matter, God may properly be called Father
of the world—since it has life in it—and also the maker
of it.
And since these things come very near to Plato's
opinion, consider, I pray, whether there may not be some
In the Republic,
BUT WHAT DOES HE MEAN BY DIVIDING THE UNIVERSE INTO UN EQUAL PARTS? AND WHICH OF THE SECTIONS, THE INTELLIGIBLE OR THE SENSIBLE, IS THE GREATER? FOR IN THIS HE HAS NOT EXPLAINED HIMSELF.
At first sight it will appear that the sensible is the
greater portion. For the essence of intelligibles being
indivisible, and in the same respect ever the same, is contracted into a little, and pure; but an essence divisible and
pervading bodies constitutes the sensible part. Now what
Yet, on the contrary, some will say that, by comparing sensibles with intelligibles, we match things mortal
with divine, in some measure; for God is in intelligibles.
Besides, the thing contained is ever less than the containing, and the nature of the universe contains the sensible
in the intelligible. For God, having placed the soul in
the middle, hath extended it through all, and hath covered
it all round with bodies. The soul is invisible, and cannot
be perceived by any of the senses, as Plato says in his
Book of Laws; therefore every man must die, but the
world shall never die. For mortality and dissolution surround every one of our vital faculties. The case is quite
otherwise in the world; for the corporeal part, contained
in the middle by the more noble and unalterable principle,
is ever preserved. And a body is said to be without parts
and indivisible for its minuteness; but what is incorporeal
and intelligible is so, as being simple and sincere, and void
of all firmness and difference. Besides, it were folly to
think to judge of incorporeal things by corporeal. The
present, or now, is said to be without parts and indivisible,
since it is everywhere and no part of the world is void of
it. But all affections and actions, and all corruptions and
generations in the world, are contained by this now. But
the mind is judge only of what is intelligible, as the sight
is of light, by reason of its simplicity and similitude. But
bodies, having several differences and diversities, are comprehended, some by one judicatory faculty, others by
another, as by several organs. Yet they do not well who
despise the intelligible and intelligent faculty in us; for
being great, it comprehends all sensibles, and attains to
things divine. The most important thing he himself
WHAT IS THE REASON THAT, THOUGH PLATO ALWAYS SAYS THAT THE SOUL IS ANCIENTER THAN THE BODY, AND THAT IT IS THE CAUSE AND PRINCIPLE OF ITS RISE, YET HE LIKEWISE SAYS, THAT NEITHER COULD THE SOUL EXIST WITHOUT THE BODY, NOR THE REASON WITHOUT THE SOUL, BUT THE SOUL IN THE BODY AND THE REASON IN THE SOUL? FOR SO THE BODY WILL SEEM TO BE AND NOT TO BE, BECAUSE IT BOTH EXISTS WITH THE SOUL, AND IS BEGOT BY THE SOUL.
Perhaps what we have often said is true; viz., that the soul without reason and the body without form did mutually ever coexist, and neither of them had generation or beginning. But after the soul did partake of reason and harmony, and being through consent made wise, it wrought a change in matter, and being stronger than the other's motions, it drew and converted these motions to itself. So the body of the world drew its original from the soul, and became conformable and like to it. For the soul did not make the Nature of the body out of itself, or out of nothing; but it wrought an orderly and pliable body out of one disorderly and formless. Just as if a man should say that the virtue of the seed is with the body, and yet that the body of the fig-tree or olive-tree was made of the seed, he would not be much out; for the body, its innate motion and mutation proceeding from the seed, grew up and became what it is. So, when formless and indefinite matter was once formed by the inbeing soul, it received such a form and disposition.
WHY, SINCE BODIES AND FIGURES ARE CONTAINED PARTLY BY RECTTLINEARS AND PARTLY BY CIRCLES, DOES HE MAKE ISOSCELES
TRIANGLES AND TRIANGLES OF UNEQUAL SIDES THE PRINCIPLES
OF RECTILINEARS; OF WHICH THE ISOSCELES TRIANGLE FORMS
THE CUBE, THE ELEMENT OF THE EARTH; AND A SCALENE TRIANGLE FORMS THE PYRAMID WHICH IS THE SEED OF FIRE, THE
OCTAHEDRON WHICH IS THE SEED OF AIR, AND THE ICOSAHEDRON
WHICH IS THE SEED OF WATER;—WHILE HE DOES NOT MEDDLE
WITH CIRCULARS, THOUGH HE DOES MENTION THE GLOBE, WHERE
HE SAYS THAT EACH OF THE AFORE-RECKONED FIGURES DIVIDES
A ROUND BODY THAT ENCLOSES IT INTO EQUAL PARTS.
Is their opinion true who think that he ascribed a dodecahedron to the globe, when he says that God made use of it in delineating the universe? For upon account of the multitude of its bases and the obtuseness of its angles, avoiding all rectitude, it is flexible, and by circumtension, like globes made of twelve skins, it becomes circular and comprehensive. For it has twenty solid angles, each of which is contained by three obtuse planes, and each of these contains one and the fifth part of a right angle. Now it is made up of twelve equilateral and equangular quinquangles (or pentagons), each of which consists of thirty of the first scalene triangles. Therefore it seems to resemble both the Zodiac and the year, it being divided into the same number of parts as these.
Or is a right line in Nature prior to circumference;
or is circumference but an accident of rectilinear? For a
right line is said to bend; and a circle is described by a
centre and distance, which is the place of a right line by
which a circumference is measured, this being everywhere
equally distant from the middle. And a cone and a cylinder are made by rectilinears; a cone by keeping one side
of a triangle fixed and carrying another round with the
Besides, a right line, whether great or little, preserves the same rectitude; but as to the circumference of a circle, the less it is, the crookeder it is; the larger, the straighter. Therefore if a convex superficies stands on a plane, it sometimes touches the subject plane in a point, sometimes in a line. So that a man may imagine that a circumference is made up of little right lines.
But observe whether this be not true, that no circle
HOW COMES IT TO PASS THAT IN PHAEDRUS IT IS SAID, THAT THE
NATURE OF A WING, BY WHICH ANY THING THAT IS HEAVY IS
CARRIED UPWARDS, PARTICIPATES MOST OF THE BODY OF GOD?
Is it because the discourse is of love, and love is of beauty inherent in a body? Now beauty, by similitude to things divine, moves and reminds the soul. Or it may be (without too much curiosity) he may be understood in plain meaning, to wit, that the several faculties of the soul being employed about bodies, the power of reasoning and understanding partakes most about divine and heavenly things; which he did not impertinently call a wing, it raising the soul from mean and mortal things to things above.
IN WHAT SENSE DOES PLATO SAY, THAT THE ANTIPERISTASIS (OR
REACTION) OF MOTION—BY REASON THERE IS NO VACUUM—IS
THE CAUSE OF THE EFFECTS IN PHYSICIANS' CUPPING-GLASSES, IN
SWALLOWING, IN THROWING OF WEIGHTS, IN THE RUNNING OF
WATER, IN THUNDER, IN THE ATTRACTION OF THE LOADSTONE,
AND IN THE HARMONY OF SOUNDS?
For it seems unreasonable to ascribe the reason of such different effects to the selfsame cause.
How respiration is made by the reaction of the air,
As to cupping-glasses, the case is thus: the air next to the flesh being comprehended and inflamed by the heat, and being made more rare than the pores of the brass, does not go into a vacuum (for there is no such thing), but into the air that is without the cupping-glass, and has an impulse upon it. This air drives that before it; and each, as it gives way, strives to succeed into the place which was vacuated by the cession of the first. And so the air approaching the flesh comprehended by the cupping-glass, and exciting it, draws the humors into the cupping-glass.
Swallowing takes place in the same way. For the cavities about the mouth and stomach are full of air; when therefore the meat is squeezed down by the tongue and tonsils, the elided air follows what gives way, and also forces down the meat.
Weights also thrown cleave the air and dissipate it, as they fall with force; the air recoiling back, according to its natural tendency to rush in and fill the vacuity, follows the impulse, and accelerates the motion.
The fall also of thunderbolts is like to darting any thing. For by the blow in the cloud, the fiery matter exploded breaks into the air; and it being broken gives way, and again being contracted above, by main force it presses the thunderbolt downwards contrary to Nature.
And neither amber nor the loadstone draws any thing
to it which is near, nor does any thing spontaneously approach them. But this stone emits strong exhalations, by
which the adjoining air being impelled forceth that which
is before it; and this being carried round in the circle, and
returning into the vacuated place, forcibly draws the iron
in the same direction. In amber there is a flammeous and
But the manner of the waters running over the
earth is not so evident. But it is observable that the waters
of lakes and ponds stand immovable, because the air about
them stagnates immovable and admits of no vacuity. For
the water on the surface of lakes and seas is troubled and
fluctuates as the air is moved, it following the motion of
the air, and moving as it is moved. For the force from
below causes the hollowness of the wave, and from above
the swelling thereof; until the air ambient and containing
the water is still. Therefore the flux of such waters as
follow the motion of the retreating air, and are impelled
by that which presses behind, is continued without end.
And this is the reason that the stream increases with the
waters, and is slow where the water is weak, the air not
giving way, and therefore suffering less reaction. So the
Concerning symphony, he shows how sounds harmonize. A quick sound is acute, a slow is grave. Therefore acute sounds move the senses the quicker; and these dying and grave sounds supervening, what arises from the contemperation of one with the other causes pleasure to the ear, which we call harmony. And by what has been said, it may easily be understood that air is the instrument of these things. For sound is the stroke upon the sense of the hearer, caused by the air; and the air strikes as it is struck by the thing moving,—if violent, acutely,—if languid, softly. The violent stroke comes quick to the ear; then the circumambient air receiving a slower, it affects and carries the sense along with it.
WHAT MEANS TIMAEUS,
Does the earth move like the sun, moon, and five
planets, which for their motions he calls organs or instruments of time? Or is the earth fixed to the axis of the
universe; yet not so built as to remain immovable, but to
turn and wheel about, as Aristarchus and Seleucus have
Or is this contradictory to Plato's opinion elsewhere,
and in the Greek instead of the
actual being of a natural organic body, having the power
of life.
It is therefore most proper to understand the earth to be here an instrument of time; not that the earth is moved, as the stars are; but that, they being carried about it, it standing still makes sunset and sunrising, by which the first measures of time, nights and days, are circumscribed. Wherefore he called it the infallible guard and artificer of night and day. For the gnomons of dials are instruments and measures of time, not in being moved with the shadows, but in standing still; they being like the earth in intercepting the light of the sun when it is down,—as Empedocles says that the earth makes night by intercepting light. This therefore may be Plato's meaning.
And so much the rather might we consider whether
the sun is not absurdly and without probability said to
be made for the distinction of time, with the moon and the
rest of the planets. For as in other respects the dignity
According to the ancients, the essence of the soul is a
number moving itself. Therefore Plato says that time and
heaven were coexistent, but that motion was before heaven
had being. But time was not. For then there neither was
order, nor measure, nor determination; but indefinite motion, as it were, the formless and rude matter of time.
Since Plato in his Commonwealth, discoursing of the
faculties of the soul, has very well compared the symphony
of reason and of the irascible and the concupiscent faculties to the harmony of the middle, lowest, and highest
chord,
DID PLATO PLACE THE RATIONAL OR THE IRASCIBLE FACULTY IN THE MIDDLE? FOR HE IS NOT CLEAR IN THE POINT.
Indeed, according to the natural order of the parts,
the place of the irascible faculty must be in the middle,
and of the rational in the highest, which the Greeks call
hypate. For they of old called the chief and supreme
highest), in respect of sublunary things
lowest.) And long before him, Homer calls the
chief God Highest of Rulers. And Nature has of due given the highest place to what is most
excellent, having placed reason as a steersman in the head,
and the concupiscent faculty at a distance, last of all and
lowest. And the lowest place they call highest). For they that ascribe the power of the middle
to it, as the ruling power, are ignorant how they deprive
it of a higher power, namely, of the highest, which is
competible neither to the irascible nor to the concupiscent
faculty; since it is the nature of them both to be governed
by and obsequious to reason, and the nature of neither of
them to govern and lead it. And the most natural place
of the irascible faculty seems to be in the middle of the
other two. For it is the nature of reason to govern, and
of the irascible faculty both to govern and be governed,
since it is obsequious to reason, and commands the concupiscent faculty when this is disobedient to reason. And as
in letters the semi-vowels are middling between mutes and
vowels, having something more than those and less than
these; so in the soul of man, the irascible faculty is not
purely passive, but hath often an imagination of good
mixed with the irrational appetite of revenge. Plato himself, after he had compared the soul to a pair of horses
and a charioteer, likened (as every one knows) the rational
faculty to the charioteer, and the concupiscent to one of
the horses, which was resty and unmanageable altogether,
bristly about the ears, deaf and disobedient both to whip
But it may be ridiculous to describe the first, middle,
and last by their place; since we see hypate highest in
the harp, lowest in the pipe; and wheresoever you place
the mese in the harp, provided it is tunable, it sounds more
acute than hypate, and more grave than nete. Nor does
the eye possess the same place in all animals; but whereever it is placed, it is natural for it to see. So a pedagogue,
though he goes not foremost but follows behind, is said to
lead (
but wherever he was, he was first and chief in power.
So the faculties of the soul are not to be ranged by mere
force in order of place or name, but according to their
WHY SAID PLATO, THAT SPEECH WAS COMPOSED OF NOUNS AND
VERBS?
For he seems to make no other parts of speech but
them. But Homer in a sportive humor has comprehended
them all in one verse:
For in it there is pronoun, participle, noun, preposition,
article, conjunction, adverb, and verb, the particle to the tent, is
said in the same sense as to Athens. What then
shall we say for Plato?
Is it that at first the ancients called that Socrates philosophizeth
or Socrates
is changed,
requiring nothing more, we say the one is
true, the other false. For very likely in the beginning
men wanted speech and articulate voice, to enable them to
express clearly at once the passions and the patients, the
actions and the agents. Now, since actions and affections
are sufficiently expressed by verbs, and they that act and
are affected by nouns, as he says, these seem to signify.
And one may say, the rest signify not. For instance, the
groans and shrieks of stage-players, and even their smiles
and reticence, make their discourse more emphatic. But
they have no necessary power to signify any thing, as a
noun and verb have, but only an ascititious power to vary
speech; just as they vary letters who mark spirits and
quantities upon letters, these being the accidents and differences of letters. This the ancients have made manifest, whom sixteen letters sufficed to speak and write any
thing.
Besides, we must not neglect to observe, that Plato
says that speech is composed of these, not by these; nor
must we blame Plato for leaving out conjunctions, prepositions, and the like, any more than we should cavil at a
man who should say such a medicine is composed of wax
and galbanum, because fire and utensils are omitted, without which it cannot be made. For speech is not composed
of these; yet by their means, and not without them, speech
must be composed. As, if a man pronounce beats or is
beaten, and put Socrates and Pythagoras to the same, he
offers us something to conceive and understand. But if
a man pronounce indeed or for or about, and no more,
For by )=Wgu/nai, h)\ ma/la tou=to e)/pos qumalge\s e)/eipes,
and,
For neither conjunction, article, nor preposition could
be called soul-grieving), but
only a verb expressing a base action or a foolish passion
of the mind. Therefore, when we would praise or dispraise poets or writers, we are wont to say, such a man
uses Attic nouns and good verbs, or else common nouns
and verbs; but none can say that Thucydides or Euripides
used Attic or good or common articles.
What then? may some say, do the rest of the parts
conduce nothing to speech? I answer, They conduce, as
salt does to victuals, or water to barley cakes. And Euenus calls fire the best sauce. Though sometimes there is
neither occasion for fire to boil, nor for salt to season our
food, which we have always occasion for. Nor has
speech always occasion for articles. I think I may say
and,
and some few besides. But in a thousand others, the
omission of the articles hinders neither perspicuity nor
elegance of phrase.
4. Now neither an animal nor an instrument nor arms nor
any thing else is more fine, efficacious, or graceful, for the
loss of a part. Yet speech, by taking away conjunctions,
often becomes more persuasive, as here:
And this of Demosthenes:
A bully in an assault may do much which his victim
cannot even describe to another person,—by his mien,
his look, his voice,—when he stings by insult, when he
attacks as an avowed enemy, when he smites with his fist,
when he gives a blow on the face. These rouse a man;
these make a man beside himself who is unused to such
foul abuse.
And again:
Not so with Midias; but from the very day, he talks,
he abuses, he shouts. Is there an election of magistrates?
Therefore the figure asyndeton, whereby conjunctions are omitted, is highly commended by writers of rhetoric. But such as keep overstrict to the law, and (according to custom) omit not a conjunction, rhetoricians blame for using a dull, flat, tedious style, without any variety in it. And inasmuch as logicians mightily want conjunctions for the joining together their axioms, as much as charioteers want yokes, and Ulysses wanted withs to tie Cyclop's sheep; this shows they are not parts of speech, but a conjunctive instrument thereof, as the word conjunction imports. Nor do conjunctions join all, but only such as are not spoken simply; unless you will make a cord part of the burthen, glue a part of a book, or distribution of money part of the government. For Demades says, that money which is given to the people out of the exchequer for public shows is the glue of a democracy. Now what conjunction does so of several propositions make one, by knitting and joining them together, as marble joins iron that is melted with it in the fire Yet the marble neither is nor is said to be part of the iron; although in this case the substances enter into the mixture and are melted together, so as to form a common substance from many and to be mutually affected. But there be some who think that conjunctions do not make any thing one, but that this kind of discourse is merely an enumeration, as when magistrates or days are reckoned in order.
Moreover, as to the other parts of speech, a pronoun
is manifestly a sort of noun; not only because it has cases
like the noun, but because some pronouns, when they are
applied to objects heretofore defined, by their mere utterance give the most distinct and proper designation of them.
Socrates or he that
says this one does more by name declare the person.
The thing we call a participle, being a mixture of a
verb and noun, is nothing of itself, as are not the common names of male and female qualities (i.e. adjectives),
but in construction it is put with others, in regard of tenses
belonging to verbs, in regard of cases to nouns. Logicians call them reflected),—as
And prepositions are like to the crests of a helmet,
or footstools and pedestals, which (one may rather say) do
belong to words than are words themselves. See whether
they rather be not pieces and scraps of words, as they that
are in haste write but dashes and pricks for letters. For
it is plain that
Therefore every one of these is of some use in speech; but nothing is a part or element of speech (as has been said) except a noun and a verb, which make the first juncture admitting of truth or falsehood, which some call a proposition or protasis, others an axiom, and which Plato called speech.