Having given all these laws to his
creatures, that he might be guiltless of future evil in any of
them, the creator sowed some of them in the earth, and some in
the moon, and some in the other instruments of time; and when he
had sown them he committed to the younger gods the fashioning of
their mortal bodies, and desired them to furnish what was still
lacking to the human soul, and having made all the suitable
additions, to rule over them, and to pilot the mortal animal in
the best and wisest manner which they could, and avert from him
all but self-inflicted evils.
When the creator had made all these ordinances he remained in
his own accustomed nature, and his children heard and were
obedient to their father's word, and receiving from him the
immortal principle of a mortal creature, in imitation of their
own creator they borrowed portions of fire, and earth, and water,
and air from the world, which were hereafter to be restored-these
they took and welded them together, not with the indissoluble
chains by which they were themselves bound, but with little pegs
too small to be visible, making up out of all the four elements
each separate body, and fastening the courses of the immortal
soul in a body which was in a state of perpetual influx and
efflux. Now these courses, detained as in a vast river, neither
overcame nor were overcome; but were hurrying and hurried to and
fro, so that the whole animal was moved and progressed,
irregularly however and irrationally and anyhow, in all the six
directions of motion, wandering backwards and forwards, and right
and left, and up and down, and in all the six directions. For
great as was the advancing and retiring flood which provided
nourishment, the affections produced by external contact caused
still greater tumult-when the body of any one met and came into
collision with some external fire, or with the solid earth or the
gliding waters, or was caught in the tempest borne on the air,
and the motions produced by any of these impulses were carried
through the body to the soul. All such motions have consequently
received the general name of "sensations," which they
still retain. And they did in fact at that time create a very
great and mighty movement; uniting with the ever flowing stream
in stirring up and violently shaking the courses of the soul,
they completely stopped the revolution of the same by their
opposing current, and hindered it from predominating and
advancing; and they so disturbed the nature of the other or
diverse, that the three double intervals [i.e. between 1, 2, 4, 8],
and the three triple intervals [i.e. between 1, 3, 9, 27],
together with the mean terms and connecting links which are
expressed by the ratios of 3 : 2, and 4 : 3, and of 9 : 8-these,
although they cannot be wholly undone except by him who united
them, were twisted by them in all sorts of ways, and the circles
were broken and disordered in every possible manner, so that when
they moved they were tumbling to pieces, and moved irrationally,
at one time in a reverse direction, and then again obliquely, and
then upside down, as you might imagine a person who is upside
down and has his head leaning upon the ground and his feet up
against something in the air; and when he is in such a position,
both he and the spectator fancy that the right of either is his
left, and left right. If, when powerfully experiencing these and
similar effects, the revolutions of the soul come in contact with
some external thing, either of the class of the same or of the
other, they speak of the same or of the other in a manner the
very opposite of the truth; and they become false and foolish,
and there is no course or revolution in them which has a guiding
or directing power; and if again any sensations enter in
violently from without and drag after them the whole vessel of
the soul, then the courses of the soul, though they seem to
conquer, are really conquered.
And by reason of all these affections, the soul, when encased
in a mortal body, now, as in the beginning, is at first without
intelligence; but when the flood of growth and nutriment abates,
and the courses of the soul, calming down, go their own way and
become steadier as time goes on, then the several circles return
to their natural form, and their revolutions are corrected, and
they call the same and the other by their right names, and make
the possessor of them to become a rational being. And if these
combine in him with any true nurture or education, he attains the
fulness and health of the perfect man, and escapes the worst
disease of all; but if he neglects education he walks lame to the
end of his life, and returns imperfect and good for nothing to
the world below. This, however, is a later stage; at present we
must treat more exactly the subject before us, which involves a
preliminary enquiry into the generation of the body and its
members, and as to how the soul was created-for what reason and
by what providence of the gods; and holding fast to probability,
we must pursue our way.
First, then, the gods, imitating the spherical shape of the
universe, enclosed the two divine courses in a spherical body,
that, namely, which we now term the head, being the most divine
part of us and the lord of all that is in us: to this the gods,
when they put together the body, gave all the other members to be
servants, considering that it partook of every sort of motion.
