If we allow for the difference of subject, and for some growth in
Plato’s own mind, the discrepancy between the Timaeus and the
other dialogues will not appear to be great. It is probable that
the relation of the ideas to God or of God to the world was
differently conceived by him at different times of his life. In
all his later dialogues we observe a tendency in him to personify
mind or God, and he therefore naturally inclines to view creation
as the work of design. The creator is like a human artist who
frames in his mind a plan which he executes by the help of his
servants. Thus the language of philosophy which speaks of first
and second causes is crossed by another sort of phraseology: ‘God
made the world because he was good, and the demons ministered to
him.’ The Timaeus is cast in a more theological and less
philosophical mould than the other dialogues, but the same
general spirit is apparent; there is the same dualism or
opposition between the ideal and actual—the soul is prior to the
body, the intelligible and unseen to the visible and corporeal.
There is the same distinction between knowledge and opinion which
occurs in the Theaetetus and Republic, the same enmity to the
poets, the same combination of music and gymnastics. The doctrine
of transmigration is still held by him, as in the Phaedrus and
Republic; and the soul has a view of the heavens in a prior state
of being. The ideas also remain, but they have become types in
nature, forms of men, animals, birds, fishes. And the attribution
of evil to physical causes accords with the doctrine which he
maintains in the Laws respecting the involuntariness of vice.