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Chapter 3

Timaeus' Lecture

by Plato

9 minutes • 1858 words

Critias

Timaeus is the most of an astronomer amongst us. He has made the nature of the universe his special study. He should speak first, beginning with the generation of the world and going down to the creation of man.

Next, I am to receive the men whom he has created, and of whom some will have profited by the excellent education which you have given them.

And then, in accordance with the tale of Solon and his law, we will bring them into court and make them citizens, as if they were those very Athenians whom the sacred Egyptian record has recovered from oblivion. From there, we will speak of them as Athenians and fellow-citizens.

TIMAEUS:

All men who have any degree of right feeling, at the beginning of every enterprise always call on God.

We also invoke the aid of Gods and Goddesses as we talk about the nature and creation of the universe.

What is that which always is and has no becoming? What is that which is always becoming and never is?

That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state.

But that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is.

Everything that becomes or is created must necessarily be created by some cause. Without a cause, nothing can be created.

The work of the Creator must necessarily be fair and perfect.

But when he looks to the created only, and uses a created pattern, it is not fair or perfect.

Was the heaven or the world always in existence and without beginning? Or was it created, and had it a beginning?*

Superphysics Note

Timaeus uses the created angle to explain how physical reality works. Whereas Superphysics believes in both non-created and created angles. The non-created is the Nirguna Brahma or the Absolute Entity and the created angle is the journey from the Absolute into the Supreme Entity or Saguna Brahma. The kew feature of the Supreme Entity is a natural hierarchy wherein the aether is superior and matter is the inferion. This is why money cannot buy true happiness or anything lasting, which can only be acquired by aethereal spirituality.

It was created. It is visible and tangible and has a body. Therefore, it is sensible.

All sensible things are apprehended by opinion and sense and are in a process of creation and created.

Whatever is created must necessarily be created by a cause.

But the father and maker of all this universe is beyond finding out. Even if we found him, it would be impossible to tell of him to all men.

Which of the patterns did the artificer have in view when he made the world? The pattern of the unchangeable, or of that which is created?

If the world is indeed fair and the artificer is good, then he must have looked to that which is eternal.

Every one will see that he must have looked to the eternal; for the world is the fairest of creations and he is the best of causes.

The world has been framed in the likeness of that which is apprehended by reason and mind and is unchangeable.
Therefore it is necessarily a copy of something.

It is all-important that the beginning of everything should be according to nature.

And in speaking of the copy and the original we may assume that words are akin to the matter which they describe;

When creation relates to the lasting, permanent, and intelligible, then they should be:

lasting and unalterable, and
as far as their nature allows, irrefutable and immovable—nothing less.

But when creation expresses only the copy or likeness and not the eternal things themselves, they need only be likely and analogous to the real words.

Being is to becoming just as truth to belief.

In our opinions about the gods and the generation of the universe, our notions are not altogether and in every respect exact and consistent with one another. But do not be surprised.

It is enough if we adduce probabilities as likely as any others, since we are only mortal men
We should accept the tale which is probable and enquire no further.

Why did the Creator make this world of generation?

He was good.* The good can never have any jealousy of anything. Being free from jealousy, He desired that all things should be as like Himself as they could be.

Superphysics Note

Good here means Positive and inclined to create and preserve, as opposed to Negative which wants to destroy. This implies that created being want to exist. However, the pure Positivity of the Creator is a fallacy from actual experience.

This is in the truest sense the origin of creation and of the world, as we shall do well in believing on the testimony of wise men: God wamted that all things should be good and nothing bad, so far as this was attainable.

He found that the whole visible sphere was moving in an irregular and disorderly way. Out of disorder he brought order, considering that order was better than disorder.

Reflecting on the things which are visible by nature, he found generally that:

the intelligent were fairer than the unintelligent creatures
intelligence could not be present in anything which was devoid of soul [i.e. rocks and inanimate objects]

This is why, when he was framing the universe, he put intelligence in soul*, and soul in body, so that his work which was by nature fairest and best.

Using the language of probability, we may say that the world became a living creature truly endowed with soul and intelligence by the providence of God.

Superphysics Note

Intelligence here is the Positive Force, the soul is the aethereal mind or material

In the likeness of what animal did the Creator make the world?

The original of the universe contains in itself all intelligible beings, just as this world comprehends us and all other visible creatures.

The Deity intended to make this world like the fairest and most perfect of intelligible beings. He framed one visible animal comprehending within itself all other animals of a kindred nature.

Is there one world? Or are they many and infinite?

If the created copy is to accord with the original, then there must be one only. For that which includes all other intelligible creatures cannot have a second or companion.

In that case, there needs to be another Creator which would include both. Those worlds would then be parts. Their likeness would then be based on that Creator.

Thus, the Creator made only one world.*

Superphysics Note

We call this Saguna Brahma or Totality of Existence. Each world has many copies within that single Brahma or Totality.

The created is necessarily corporeal, visible, and tangible.

The visibility is facilitated by fire [electromagnetism]. The tangibility is facilitated by solidity. Nothing is solid without earth [strong force].

Wherefore in the beginning of creation, the body of the universe was made of fire [electromagnetism] and earth [strong force].

But two things cannot be rightly put together without a third. There must be some bond of union between them.

The fairest bond is that which makes the most complete fusion* of:

itself and
the things which it combines

Superphysics Note

In Social Superphysics, this is why the leaders of society must bind themselves with the citizens, instead of commanding from afar.

Proportion is best adapted to effect such a union.

If a set of any 3 numbers has a mean, the 1st number is

Superphysics Note

For example, 1 and 5 has 3 as its ‘mean’ being away by 2 units from both.

For whenever in any three numbers, whether cube or square, there is a mean, which is to the last term what the first term is to it.

When the mean is to the first term as the last term is to the mean—then the mean becoming first and last, and the first and last both becoming means, they will all of them of necessity come to be the same, and having become the same with one another will be all one.

If the universal frame had been created a surface only and having no depth, a single mean would have sufficed to bind together itself and the other terms.

But now, the world must be solid. Solid bodies are always compacted two means, not one.*

Superphysics Note

In a universe where there is only light or electromagnetism, there would only be one ‘mean’. But since we live in a universe with solid material bodies, there are 2. This manifests as wave-particle duality.

And so, God placed water and air in the mean between fire and earth.

These have the same proportion as far as possible. Thus he bound and put together a visible and tangible heaven.

This is how, out of 4 such elements, the body of the world was created. It was harmonized by proportion, and therefore has the spirit of friendship. Having been reconciled to itself, it was indissoluble.

The creation took up all of each of the 4 elements. The Creator compounded the world out of all

the fire
the water
the air
the earth.

He leaves no part of any of them nor any power of them outside.

His intention was:

The animal should be a perfect whole with perfect parts
It should be one, leaving no remnants out of which another such world might be created
It should be free from old age and unaffected by disease.

If heat and cold and other powerful forces which unite bodies surround and attack them from without when they are unprepared, they decompose them. By bringing diseases and old age upon them, make them waste away—for this cause and on these grounds he made the world one whole, having every part entire, and being therefore perfect and not liable to old age and disease.

He gave the suitable and natural shape to the universe.

Now to the animal which was to comprehend all animals, that shape was suitable which comprehends within itself all other shapes.

He made the world in the shape of a globe, round as from a lathe. It has its extremes in every direction equidistant from the centre.

God considered that the like is infinitely fairer than the unlike. This is why He chose a globe shape which is the most like itself.

In the first place, because the living being had no need of eyes when there was nothing remaining outside him to be seen; nor of ears when there was nothing to be heard;

There was no surrounding atmosphere to be breathed.

Nor would there have been any use of organs by the help of which he might receive his food or get rid of what he had already digested, since there was nothing which went from him or came into him= for there was nothing beside him. Of design he was created thus, his own waste providing his own food, and all that he did or suffered taking place in and by himself.