Page:Works of Plato his first fifty-five dialogues (Taylor 1804) (Vol 2 of 5) (IA Vol2worksofplato00plat).pdf/459

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INTRODUCTION TO THE TIMiEUS.

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yet this moſt interefting circumftance Teems to have been utterly unknown to the moderns.

Hence, not in the leaft fufpeCting this to be the cafe, they

have immediately concluded from ftars appearing of which we have no account, and others difappearing which have been obferved in the heavens for many ages, that the flars are bodies, like earthly natures, fubjeCt to generation and decay.

But this is not wonderful, if we confider that fuch

men as thefe have not the fmalleft conception that the univerfe is a perfect whole ; that every thing perfect muft have a firft, middle, and laft; and that, in confequence of this, the heavens alone can rank in the firft place, and earth in the laft. As the univerfe, indeed, as well as each of its principal parts or wholes, is perpetual, and as this perpetuity being temporal can only fubfift by peri¬ odical circulation, hence all the celeftial bodies, in order that all the poftible variety of things may be unfolded, form different periods at different times ; and their appearings and difappearings are nothing more than the reftitutions of their circulations to their priftine ftate, and the beginnings of new periods.

For according to thefe efpecially, favs Proclus, they turn and

tranfmute mundane natures, and bring on abundant corruptions and mighty mutations, as Plato afferts in the Republic. In the next place, from the fublime fpeech of the demiurgus to the junior or mundane Gods, the reader may obtain full conviction that the Gods of the antients were not dead men deified ; for they are here reprefented as commanded by the mundane artificer to fabricate the whole of the mortal race.

And with refpeCt to the properties of the fublunary Gods,

which Plato comprehends in nine divinities, Proclus beautifully obferves that Heaven bounds, Earth corroborates, and Ocean moves, the whole of generation.

That Tcthys eftablifhes every thing in its proper motion, in¬

tellectual natures in intellectual, middle natures in animal, and corporeal natures in phyfical motion ; Ocean at the fame time moving all things collected together in one.

But Saturn diftributes intellectually only, Rhea

vivifies, Phorcys fcatters fpermatic reafons, Jupiter gives perfection to things apparent from unapparent caufes, and Juno evolves according to the all-various mutations of apparent natures.

And thus through this ennead

the fublunary world is in a becoming manner diftributed and filled ; divinely indeed from the Gods, angelically from angels, and demoniacally from von. ii.

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demons.