The creation of the world is the impression of order on a
previously existing chaos. The formula of Anaxagoras—‘all things
were in chaos or confusion, and then mind came and disposed
them’—is a summary of the first part of the Timaeus. It is true
that of a chaos without differences no idea could be formed. All
was not mixed but one; and therefore it was not difficult for the
later Platonists to draw inferences by which they were enabled to
reconcile the narrative of the Timaeus with the Mosaic account of
the creation. Neither when we speak of mind or intelligence, do
we seem to get much further in our conception than circular
motion, which was deemed to be the most perfect. Plato, like
Anaxagoras, while commencing his theory of the universe with
ideas of mind and of the best, is compelled in the execution of
his design to condescend to the crudest physics.
(c) The morality of the Timaeus is singular, and it is difficult
to adjust the balance between the two elements of it. The
difficulty which Plato feels, is that which all of us feel, and
which is increased in our own day by the progress of physical
science, how the responsibility of man is to be reconciled with
his dependence on natural causes. And sometimes, like other men,
he is more impressed by one aspect of human life, sometimes by
the other. In the Republic he represents man as freely choosing
his own lot in a state prior to birth—a conception which, if
taken literally, would still leave him subject to the dominion of
necessity in his after life; in the Statesman he supposes the
human race to be preserved in the world only by a divine
interposition; while in the Timaeus the supreme God commissions
the inferior deities to avert from him all but self-inflicted
evils—words which imply that all the evils of men are really
self-inflicted. And here, like Plato (the insertion of a note in
the text of an ancient writer is a literary curiosity worthy of
remark), we may take occasion to correct an error. For we too
hastily said that Plato in the Timaeus regarded all ‘vices and
crimes as involuntary.’ But the fact is that he is inconsistent
with himself; in one and the same passage vice is attributed to
the relaxation of the bodily frame, and yet we are exhorted to
avoid it and pursue virtue. It is also admitted that good and
evil conduct are to be attributed respectively to good and evil
laws and institutions. These cannot be given by individuals to
themselves; and therefore human actions, in so far as they are
dependent upon them, are regarded by Plato as involuntary rather
than voluntary. Like other writers on this subject, he is unable
to escape from some degree of self-contradiction. He had learned