Page:Works of Plato his first fifty-five dialogues (Taylor 1804) (Vol 2 of 5) (IA Vol2worksofplato00plat).pdf/436

 426

INTRODUCTION TO THE TIM^US.

piodorus) ill his obſcure way concerning the fun, fays of that luminary “ enkindling meafures and extinguijhing meafures—that is, enkindling an imag;e of himfelf in the air when he rifes, the fame O

becoming; O

extingruifhed O

when he fets. Nor let the moderns fondly imagine that their fyftem of aftronomy was adopted by Pythagoras and his followers, for this opinion is confuted by Spanheim and Dickinfon ; and this, fays Fabricius *, with no contemptible arguments : and we are informed by Simplicius 2, long before them, that the Pythagoreans by the fire in the middle did not mean the fun, but a demiurgic vivific fire, leated in the centre of the earth.

The prophecy of

Swift, therefore, in his Gulliver’s Travels, that the boafted theory of gravi¬ tation would at one time or other be exploded, may certainly be confidered as a moft true prediction, at leaft fo far as relates to the celeftial orbs. But to return from this digreffion.

The inerratic fphere, according to

the Platonic philofophy, has the relation of a monad to the multitude of ftars which it contains ; or, in other words, it is the proximate caufe of this mul¬ titude which it contains, and with which it has a coordinate fubfiftence. But, according to the fame philofophy, all the planets are fixed in folid fpberes, in conformity to the motions of which they perpetually revolve ; but, at the fame time, have peculiar motions of their own befides thofe of the fpheres 3. Thefe fpheres too are all concentric, or have the fame centre with the earth and the univerfe, and do not confift of hard impenetrable matter, as the moderns have ignorantly fuppofed ; for being divine or imma¬ terial bodies, fuch as we have already defcribed, they have nothing of the denfity and gravity of this our earth, but are able to permeate each other without divifion, and to occupy the fame place together ; juft like the illu¬ minations emitted from feveral lamps, which pafs through the whole of the lame room at once, and pervade each other without confufion, divulfion, or any apparent diftindlion.

So that thefe fpheres are fimilar to mathematical

bodies, fo far as they are immaterial, free from contrariety, and exempt From every paffive quality ; but are different from them, fo far as they are full of motion and life.

But they are concealed from our fight through the


 * Vid. Biblioth. Grsec. vol. I. de Orpheo.

1

In Ariftot. de Ccelo, lib. 2.

3 For Plato makes no mention of epicycles and eccentric circles.

tenuity