Page:Works of Plato his first fifty-five dialogues (Taylor 1804) (Vol 2 of 5) (IA Vol2worksofplato00plat).pdf/457

 INTRODUCTION TO THE TIMiEUS.

447

filled with life from its inſpiring foul, and through which it generates and nourifhes lives of all-various kinds.

For one fpecies of life is rooted in the

earth, and another moves about its furface.

For how is it poffible that

plants fhould live while abiding in the earth, but when feparated from it die, unlefs its vifible bulk was full of life ?

Indeed it muff univerfally follow

that wholes mud be animated prior to parts : for it would be ridiculous that man fhould participate of a rational foul and of intelled, but that earth and air fhould be deprived of a foul, fublimely carried in thefe elements as in a chariot, governing them from on high, and preferving them in the limits accommodated t£> their nature.

For, as Theophradus well obferves, wholes

would poffefs lefs authority than parts, and things eternal than fuch as are corruptible, if deprived of the pofleflion of foul.

Hence there mud necef-

farily be a foul and intellect in the earth, the former caufing her to be pro¬ lific, and the latter connectedly containing her in the middle of the univerfe. So that earth is a divine animal, full of intellectual and animadic effences, and of immaterial powers.

For if a partial foul, fuch as ours, in con¬

junction with its proper ethereal vehicle, is able to exercife an exuberant energy in a material body, what ought we to think of a foul fo divine as that of the earth ? Ought we not to affert, that by a much greater priority fhe ufes thefe apparent bodies through other middle vehicles, and through thefe enables them to receive her divine illuminations ? 4< Earth then fubfiding in this manner, fhe is faid, in the fird place, to be our nurfe, as poffefTing, in a certain refped, a power equivalent to heaven ; and becaufe, as heaven comprehends divine animals, fo earth appears to con¬ tain fuch as are earthly. And, in the fecond place, as infpiring our life from her own proper life.

For fhe not only yields us fruits, and nourifhes our

bodies through thefe, but fhe fills our fouls with illuminations from her own divine foul, and through her intelled awakens ours from its oblivious deep. And thus, through the whole of herfelf, fhe becomes the nurfe of our whole eompofition. “ But we may confider the poles as powers which give liability to the univerfe, and excite the whole of its bulk to intelligible love ; which con¬ ned a divifible nature indivifibly, and that which podeffes in'eral in an united and indidant manner.

But the axis is one divinity conoreo-ating

the centres of the univerfe, conneding the whole w;orld, and moving its 4

divine