The soul of the world may also be conceived as the
personification of the numbers and figures in which the heavenly
bodies move. Imagine these as in a Pythagorean dream, stripped of
qualitative difference and reduced to mathematical abstractions.
They too conform to the principle of the same, and may be
compared with the modern conception of laws of nature. They are
in space, but not in time, and they are the makers of time. They
are represented as constantly thinking of the same; for thought
in the view of Plato is equivalent to truth or law, and need not
imply a human consciousness, a conception which is familiar
enough to us, but has no place, hardly even a name, in ancient
Greek philosophy. To this principle of the same is opposed the
principle of the other—the principle of irregularity and
disorder, of necessity and chance, which is only partially
impressed by mathematical laws and figures. (We may observe by
the way, that the principle of the other, which is the principle
of plurality and variation in the Timaeus, has nothing in common
with the ‘other’ of the Sophist, which is the principle of
determination.) The element of the same dominates to a certain
extent over the other—the fixed stars keep the ‘wanderers’ of the
inner circle in their courses, and a similar principle of
fixedness or order appears to regulate the bodily constitution of
man. But there still remains a rebellious seed of evil derived
from the original chaos, which is the source of disorder in the
world, and of vice and disease in man.