 Part 8 of Timaeus This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Anna Simon. Timaeus by Plato, translated by Benjamin Joett. Part 8. Timaeus continues. Such is the manner in which diseases of the body arise. The disorders of the soul, which depend upon the body, originate as follows. We must acknowledge disease of the mind to be a want of intelligence, and of this there are two kinds, to it madness and ignorance. In whatever state a man experiences either of them, that state may be called disease, and excessive pains and pleasures are justly to be regarded as the greatest diseases to which the soul is liable. For a man who is in great joy or in great pain, in his unreasonable eagerness to attain the one and to avoid the other, is not able to see or to hear anything rightly, but he is mad, and is at the time utterly incapable of any participation in reason. He who has the seed about the spinal marrow too plentiful and overflowing, like a tree overladen with fruit, has many throes, and also obtains many pleasures in his desires and their offspring, and is for the most part of his life deranged, because his pleasures and pains are so very great. His soul is rendered foolish and disordered by his body. Yet he is regarded not as one diseased, but as one who is voluntarily bad, which is a mistake. The truth is that the intemperance of love is a disease of the soul due chiefly to the moisture and fluidity which is produced in one of the elements by the loose consistency of the bones, and in general all that which is termed the incontinence of pleasure, and is deemed a reproach under the idea that the wicked voluntarily do wrong is not justly a matter for reproach, for no man is voluntarily bad, but the bad become bad by reason of an ill disposition of the body and bad education, things which are hateful to every man and happen to him against his will. And in the case of pain too, in like manner, the soul suffers much evil from the body, for where the acid and briny phlegm and other bitter and bilious humours wander about in the body, and find no exit or escape, but are pent up within and mingle their own vapours with the motions of the soul, and are blended with them. They produce all sorts of diseases, more or fewer, and in every degree of intensity, and being carried to the three places of the soul, whichever they may severally assail, they create infinite varieties of ill temper and melancholy, of rashness and cowardice, and also of forgetfulness and stupidity. Further, when to this evil constitution of body evil forms of government are added, and evil discourses are uttered in private as well as in public, and no sort of instruction is given in youth to cure these evils, then all of us who are bad become bad from two causes which are entirely beyond our control. In such cases, the planters are to blame rather than the plants, the educators rather than the educated. But however that may be, we should endeavour as far as we can by education and studies and learning to avoid vice and attain virtue. This however is part of another subject. There is a corresponding inquiry concerning the mode of treatment by which the mind and the body are to be preserved, about which it is meat and right that I should say a word in turn, for it is more our duty to speak of the good than of the evil. Everything that is good is fair, and the fair is not without proportion, and the animal which is to be fair must have due proportion. Now we perceive lesser symmetries or proportions and reason about them, but of the highest and greatest we take no heed, for there is no proportion or disproportion more productive of health and disease and virtue and vice than that between soul and body. This however we do not perceive nor do we reflect that when a weak or small frame is the vehicle of a great and mighty soul, or conversely, when a little soul is encased in a large body, then the whole animal is not fair, for it lacks the most important of all symmetries. But the due proportion of mind and body is the fairest and loveliest of all sights to him who has the seeing eye. Just as a body which has a leg too long or which is unsymmetrical in some other respect is an unpleasant sight, and also when doing its share of work is much distressed and makes convulsive efforts and often stumbles through awkwardness, and is the cause of infinite evil to its own self, in like manner we should conceive of the double nature which we call the living being, and when in this compound there is an impassioned soul more powerful than the body, that soul I say convels us and fills with disorders the whole inner nature of man, and when eager in the pursuit of some sort of learning or study causes wasting, or again when teaching or disputing in private or in public and strives and controversies arise, inflames and dissolves the composite frame of man and introduces runes, and the nature of this phenomenon is not understood by most professors of medicine who ascribe it to the opposite of the real cause, and once more when a body large and too strong for the soul is united to a small and weak intelligence then in as much as there are two desires natural to man, one of food for the sake of the body and one of wisdom for the sake of the Diviner part of us, then I say the motions of the stronger getting the better and increasing their own power but making the soul dull and stupid and forgetful and gender ignorance which is the greatest of diseases. There is one protection against both kinds of disproportion that we should not move the body without the soul or the soul without the body and thus they will be on their guard against each other and be healthy and well balanced and therefore the mathematician or anyone else whose thoughts are much absorbed in some intellectual pursuit must allow his body also to have due exercise and practice gymnastic and he who is careful to fashion the body should in turn impart to the soul its proper motions and should cultivate music and all philosophy if he would deserve to be called truly fair and truly good and the separate parts should be treated in the same manner in imitation of the pattern of the universe for as the body is heated and also cooled within by the elements which enter into it and is again dried up and moistened by external things and experiences these and the like affections from both kinds of motions the result is that the body if given up to motion when in a state of quiescence is over mastered and parishes but if anyone in imitation of that which we call the foster mother and nurse of the universe will not allow the body ever to be inactive but is always producing motions and agitations through its whole extent which form the natural defense against other motions both internal and external and by mother exercise reduces to order according to their affinities the particles and affections which are wondering about the body as we have already said when speaking of the universe he will not allow enemy placed by the side of enemy to stir up wars and his orders in the body but he will place friend by the side of friend so as to create health now of all motions that is the best which is produced in a thing by itself for it is most akin to the motion of thought and of the universe but that motion which is caused by others is not so good and worst of all is that which moves the body when at rest in parts only and by some external agency where full of all modes of purifying and reuniting the body the best is gymnastic the next best is a surging motion as in sailing or any other mode of conveyance which is not fatiguing the third sort of motion may be of use in a case of extreme necessity but in any other will be adopted by no man of sense I mean the purgative treatment of physicians for diseases unless they are very dangerous should not be irritated by medicines since every form of disease is in a manner akin to the living being whose complex frame has an appointed term of life for not the whole race only but each individual barring inevitable accidents comes into the world having a fixed span and the triangles in us are originally framed with power to last for a certain time beyond which no man can prolong his life and this holds also of the constitution of diseases if anyone regardless of the appointed time tries to subdue them by medicine he only aggravates and multiplies them where for we ought always to manage them by regimen as far as a man can spare the time and not provoke a disagreeable enemy by medicines enough of the composite animal and of the body which is a part of him and of the manner in which a man may train and be trained by himself so as to live most according to reason and we must above and before all provide that the element which is to train him shall be the fairest and best adapted to that purpose a minute discussion of the subject would be a serious task but if as before I am to give only an outline the subject may not unfitly be summed up as follows I have often remarked that there are three kinds of soul located within us having each of them motions and I must now repeat in the fewest words possible that one part if remaining inactive and seizing from its natural motion must necessarily become very weak but that which is trained and exercised very strong where for we should take care that the movements of the different parts of the soul should be in due proportion and we should consider that God gave the sovereign part of the human soul to be the divinity of each one being that part which as we say dwells at the top of the body and in as much as we are a plant not of an earthly but of a heavenly growth raises us from earth to our kindred who are in heaven and in this we say truly for the divine power suspended the head and root of us from that place where the generation of the soul first began and thus made the whole body upright when a man is always occupied with the cravings of desire and ambition and is eagerly striving to satisfy them all his thoughts must be mortal and as far as it is possible altogether to become such he must be mortal every wit because he has cherished his mortal part but he who has been earnest in the love of knowledge and of true wisdom and as exercises intellect more than any other part of him must have thoughts immortal and divine if he attained truth and in so far as human nature is capable of sharing in immortality he must altogether be immortal and since he is ever cherishing the divine power and has the divinity within him in perfect order he will be perfectly happy now there is only one way of taking care of things and this is to give to each the food and motion which are natural to it and the motions which are naturally akin to the divine principle within us are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe these each man should follow and correct the causes of the head which were corrupted at our birth and by learning the harmonies and revolutions of the universe should assimilate the thinking being to the thought renewing his original nature and having assimilated them should attain to that perfect life which the gods have set before mankind both for the present and the future thus our original design of discoursing about the universe down to the creation of man is nearly completed a brief mention may be made of the generation of other animals so far as a subject admits of brevity in this manner our argument will best attain a due propulsion on the subject of animals then the following remarks may be offered of the man who came into the world those who were cowards or let unrighteous lives may with reason be supposed to have changed into the nature of women in the second generation and this was the reason why at that time the gods created in us the desire of sexual intercourse contriving in man one animated substance and in woman another which they formed respectively in the following manner the outlet for drink by which liquids pass through the lung under the kidneys and into the bladder which receives and then by the pressure of the air amidst them was so fashioned by them as to penetrate also into the body of the marrow which passes from the head along the neck and through the back and which in the preceding discourse we have named the seed and the seed having life and becoming endowed with respiration produces in that part in which it respires a lively desire of emission and thus creates in us the love of procreation wherefore also in man the organ of generation becoming rebellious and masterful like an animal disobedient to reason and maddened with a sting of lust seeks to gain absolute sway and the same is the case with a so-called womb or matrix women the animal within them is the xyrus of procreating children and when remaining unfruitful long beyond its proper time gets discontented and angry and wandering in every direction through the body closes up the passages of the breath and by obstructing respiration drives them to extremity causing all varieties of disease until at length the desire and love of the man and the woman bringing them together and as it were plucking the fruit from the tree so in the womb as in a field animals unseen by reason of their smallness and without form these again are separated and matured within they are then finally brought out into the light and thus the generation of animals is completed and thus were created women and the female sex in general but the race of birds was created out of innocent light-minded men who although their minds were directed toward heaven imagined in their simplicity that the clearest demonstration of the things above was to be obtained by sight these were remodeled and transformed into birds and they grew feathers instead of hair the race of wild pedestrian animals again came from those who had no philosophy in any of their thoughts and never considered at all about the nature of the heavens because they had ceased to use the courses of the head but followed the guidance of those parts of the soul which are in the breast in consequence of these habits of theirs they had their front legs and their heads resting upon the earth to which they were drawn by natural affinity and the crowns of their heads were elongated and of all sorts of shapes into which the courses of the soul were crushed by reason of disuse and this was the reason why they were created quadrupeds and polypods God gave them more senseless of them the more support that they might be more attracted to the earth and the most foolish of them who trail their bodies entirely upon the ground and have no longer any need of feet he made without feet to crawl upon the earth the fourth class were the inhabitants of the water these were made out of the most entirely senseless and ignorant of all whom the transformers did not think any longer worthy of pure respiration because they possessed a soul which was made impure by all sorts of transgression and instead of the subtle and pure medium of air they gave them the deep and muddy sea to be their element of respiration and hence arose the rays of fishes and oysters and other aquatic animals which have received the most remote habitations as a punishment of their outlandish ignorance these are the laws by which animals pass into one another now as ever changing as they lose or gain wisdom and folly we may now say that our discourse about the nature of the universe has an end the world has received animals mortal and immortal and is fulfilled with them and has become a visible animal containing the visible the sensible god who is the image of the intellectual the greatest best fairest most perfect the one only begotten heaven end of part eight end of Timaeus by Plato translated by Benjamin Joe it