divisions of knowledge; and is becoming aware that besides
dialectic, mathematics, and the arts, there is another field
which has been hitherto unexplored by him. But he has not as yet
defined this intermediate territory which lies somewhere between
medicine and mathematics, and he would have felt that there was
as great an impiety in ranking theories of physics first in the
order of knowledge, as in placing the body before the soul.
It is true, however, that the Timaeus is by no means confined to
speculations on physics. The deeper foundations of the Platonic
philosophy, such as the nature of God, the distinction of the
sensible and intellectual, the great original conceptions of time
and space, also appear in it. They are found principally in the
first half of the dialogue. The construction of the heavens is
for the most part ideal; the cyclic year serves as the connection
between the world of absolute being and of generation, just as
the number of population in the Republic is the expression or
symbol of the transition from the ideal to the actual state. In
some passages we are uncertain whether we are reading a
description of astronomical facts or contemplating processes of
the human mind, or of that divine mind (Phil.) which in Plato is
hardly separable from it. The characteristics of man are
transferred to the world-animal, as for example when intelligence
and knowledge are said to be perfected by the circle of the Same,
and true opinion by the circle of the Other; and conversely the
motions of the world-animal reappear in man; its amorphous state
continues in the child, and in both disorder and chaos are
gradually succeeded by stability and order. It is not however to
passages like these that Plato is referring when he speaks of the
uncertainty of his subject, but rather to the composition of
bodies, to the relations of colours, the nature of diseases, and
the like, about which he truly feels the lamentable ignorance
prevailing in his own age.