Midway between the Being which is indivisible
and remains always the same and the Being which is transient and divisible in
bodies, He blended a third form of Being compounded out of the twain, that is
to say, out of the Same and the Other; and in like manner He compounded it
midway between that one of them which is indivisible and that one which is
divisible in bodies. And He took the three of them, and blent them all together
into one form, by forcing the Other into union with the Same, in spite of its
being naturally difficult to mix. And when with the aid of Being He had mixed them, and had made of
them one out of three, straightway He began to distribute the whole thereof
into so many portions as was meet; and each portion was a mixture of the Same,
of the Other, and of Being. Footnote 1The choice of these three as constituents of the Soul is
explained by the use of the same terms in the Sophist
(244-245) to denote certain Greatest Kinds
or main
categories. As Professor Paul Shorey has aptly observed (
Amer. Journ. Philol.
ix. p. 298), It is necessary that the Soul should recognize
everywhere . . . the same, the other and essence, those three μέγιστα γένηof the . .
.Sophist. Hence on the Greek principle that like is
known by like, Plato makes real substances out of these three
abstractions and puts them as plastic material into the hands of the
Demiurgus for the formation of the Soul.
And He began
making the division thus: First He took one portion from the whole; then He
took a portion double of this; then a third portion, half as much again as the
second portion, that is, three times as much as the first; he fourth portion He
took was twice as much as the second; the fifth three times as much as the
third; the sixth eight
times as much as the first; and the seventh twenty-seven times as much as the
first. Footnote 2These seven numbers may be arranged in two branches,
in order to show the two series of which Timaeus immediately goes on the
speak:1 (the 1st), 2 (the 2nd), 4 (the 4th), 8
(the 6th); 3 (the 3rd), 9 (the 5th), 27 (the 7th). The former branch
contains the double intervals,
i.e., the powers of 2; the
latter one the triple intervals,
i.e., the powers of
3.