Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 2 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"Plutarch
Philosophy
Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 2 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"
Plutarch
Classical literature; Essays; Ethics; Philosophy
The same was his opinion concerning the world; for he knew it to be
uncreated and without end, but not perceiving it so easy to apprehend
how the structure was reared, or by what order and government
supported, unless by admitting its beginning and the causes thereto
concurring, he followed that method to instruct himself. These things
being thus generally by them laid down, Eudorus will allow to neither
side any share of probability; and indeed to me they both seem to have
wandered from the opinion of Plato, if we intend to make the most
likely rule our guide,—which is not to advance our own conceits,
but to come as close as we can to his sense and meaning. Now as to
this same mixture (as they call it) of the intelligible and sensitive
substance, no reason appears why it should be more the original of the
soul than of any other thing that ye can name. For the whole world
itself and every one of its parts pretend to no other composition
than of a sensitive and an intelligible substance, of which the one
affords matter and foundation, the other form and figure to the whole
mass. And then again, whate’er there is of material substance, framed
and structured by participation and assimilation of the intelligible
nature is not only to be felt but visible to the eye; whenas the soul
still soars above the reach of all natural apprehension. Neither did
Plato ever assert the soul to be number, but a perpetually self-moving
nature, the fountain and principle of motion. Only he embellished and
adorned the substance of it with number, proportion, and harmony;
as being a subject capable of receiving the most goodly form which
those ornaments could produce. So that I cannot believe it to be the
same thing to compose the soul according to number, and to affirm the
soul to be number itself. Nor can it be said to be harmony because
harmoniously composed, as he has clearly demonstrated in his Treatise
of the Soul. But plain it is, that those philosophers understood not
the meaning of the Same and the Other. For they tell us how the Same
contributes rest, the Other motion toward the generation of the soul.
Though Plato himself, in his treatise entitled the Sophist, disposes
and distinguishes Essence, the Same, the Other, together with Motion
and Rest, as being five things altogether differing one from another
and void of mutual affinity.
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