From the garden of the Timaeus, as from the other dialogues of
Plato, we may still gather a few flowers and present them at
parting to the reader. There is nothing in Plato grander and
simpler than the conversation between Solon and the Egyptian
priest, in which the youthfulness of Hellas is contrasted with
the antiquity of Egypt. Here are to be found the famous words, ‘O
Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are ever young, and there is not an
old man among you’—which may be compared to the lively saying of
Hegel, that ‘Greek history began with the youth Achilles and left
off with the youth Alexander.’ The numerous arts of
verisimilitude by which Plato insinuates into the mind of the
reader the truth of his narrative have been already referred to.
Here occur a sentence or two not wanting in Platonic irony
(Greek—a word to the wise). ‘To know or tell the origin of the
other divinities is beyond us, and we must accept the traditions
of the men of old time who affirm themselves to be the offspring
of the Gods—that is what they say—and they must surely have known
their own ancestors. How can we doubt the word of the children of
the Gods? Although they give no probable or certain proofs,
still, as they declare that they are speaking of what took place
in their own family, we must conform to custom and believe them.’
‘Our creators well knew that women and other animals would some
day be framed out of men, and they further knew that many animals
would require the use of nails for many purposes; wherefore they
fashioned in men at their first creation the rudiments of nails.’
Or once more, let us reflect on two serious passages in which the
order of the world is supposed to find a place in the human soul
and to infuse harmony into it. ‘The soul, when touching anything
that has essence, whether dispersed in parts or undivided, is
stirred through all her powers to declare the sameness or
difference of that thing and some other; and to what individuals
are related, and by what affected, and in what way and how and
when, both in the world of generation and in the world of
immutable being. And when reason, which works with equal truth,
whether she be in the circle of the diverse or of the same,—in
voiceless silence holding her onward course in the sphere of the
self-moved,—when reason, I say, is hovering around the sensible
world, and when the circle of the diverse also moving truly
imparts the intimations of sense to the whole soul, then arise
opinions and beliefs sure and certain. But when reason is
concerned with the rational, and the circle of the same moving
smoothly declares it, then intelligence and knowledge are
necessarily perfected;’ where, proceeding in a similar path of