dissolvable stitches wisdom tooth extraction

dissolvable stitches wisdom tooth extraction

part 5timaeus continues unless a person comes to an understandingabout the nature and conditions of rest and motion, he will meetwith many d... Februari 08, 2017

part 5timaeus continues unless a person comes to an understandingabout the nature and conditions of rest and motion, he will meetwith many difficulties in the discussion which follows. something hasbeen said of this matter already, and something more remains to besaid, which is, that motion never exists in what is uniform. for to conceivethat anything can be moved without a mover is hard or indeedimpossible, and equally impossible to conceive that there can be amover unless there be something which can be moved—motion cannotexist where either of these

are wanting, and for these to be uniform isimpossible; wherefore we must assign rest to uniformity and motionto the want of uniformity. now inequality is the cause of the nature whichis wanting in uniformity; and of this we have already described theorigin. but there still remains the further point—why things whendivided after their kinds do not cease to pass through one another andto change their place—which we will now proceed to explain. in the revolutionof the universe are comprehended all the four elements, and thisbeing circular and having a tendency to come together, compresses everythingand will not allow any

place to be left void. wherefore, also, fireabove all things penetrates everywhere, and air next, as being next inrarity of the elements; and the two other elements in like mannerpenetrate according to their degrees of rarity. for those things whichare composed of the largest particles have the largest void left in theircompositions, and those which are composed of the smallest particleshave the least. and the contraction caused by the compression thruststhe smaller particles into the interstices of the larger. and thus, whenthe small parts are placed side by side with the larger, and the lesserdivide the greater and the

greater unite the lesser, all the elementsare borne up and down and hither and thither towards their own places;for the change in the size of each changes its position in space. andthese causes generate an inequality which is always maintained, andis continually creating a perpetual motion of the elements in all time. in the next place we have to consider thatthere are divers kinds of fire. there are, for example, first, flame;and secondly, those emanations of flame which do not burn butonly give light to the eyes; thirdly, the remains of fire, which are seenin red-hot embers after the

flame has been extinguished. there are similardifferences in the air; of which the brightest part is called theaether, and the most turbid sort mist and darkness; and there are variousother nameless kinds which arise from the inequality of the triangles.water, again, admits in the first place of a division into two kinds;the one liquid and the other fusile. the liquid kind is composed of thesmall and unequal particles of water; and moves itself and is moved byother bodies owing to the want of uniformity and the shape of its particles;whereas the fusile kind, being formed of large and uniform particles,is more stable than

the other, and is heavy and compact by reasonof its uniformity. but when fire gets in and dissolves the particlesand destroys the uniformity, it has greater mobility, and becomingfluid is thrust forth by the neighbouring air and spreads upon theearth; and this dissolution of the solid masses is called melting, andtheir spreading out upon the earth flowing. again, when the fire goes outof the fusile substance, it does not pass into a vacuum, but into theneighbouring air; and the air which is displaced forces together the liquidand still moveable mass into the place which was occupied by the fire,and unites it with

itself. thus compressed the mass resumes itsequability, and is again at unity with itself, because the fire whichwas the author of the inequality has retreated; and this departureof the fire is called cooling, and the coming together which followsupon it is termed congealment. of all the kinds termed fusile,that which is the densest and is formed out of the finest and most uniformparts is that most precious possession called gold, which ishardened by filtration through rock; this is unique in kind, and has botha glittering and a yellow colour. a shoot of gold, which is so denseas to be very hard, and takes

a black colour, is termed adamant. there isalso another kind which has parts nearly like gold, and of which thereare several species; it is denser than gold, and it contains a smalland fine portion of earth, and is therefore harder, yet also lighter becauseof the great interstices which it has within itself; and this substance,which is one of the bright and denser kinds of water, when solidifiedis called copper. there is an alloy of earth mingled with it,which, when the two parts grow old and are disunited, shows itself separatelyand is called rust. the remaining phenomena of the same kind therewill be no difficulty in

reasoning out by the method of probabilities.a man may sometimes set aside meditations about eternal things, andfor recreation turn to consider the truths of generation which areprobable only; he will thus gain a pleasure not to be repented of, andsecure for himself while he lives a wise and moderate pastime. letus grant ourselves this indulgence, and go through the probabilitiesrelating to the same subjects which follow next in order. water which is mingled with fire, so muchas is fine and liquid (being so called by reason of its motion and theway in which it rolls along

the ground), and soft, because its bases giveway and are less stable than those of earth, when separated from fireand air and isolated, becomes more uniform, and by their retirementis compressed into itself; and if the condensation be very great, thewater above the earth becomes hail, but on the earth, ice; and that whichis congealed in a less degree and is only half solid, when abovethe earth is called snow, and when upon the earth, and condensed from dew,hoar-frost. then, again, there are the numerous kinds of water whichhave been mingled with one another, and are distilled through plantswhich grow in the earth; and

this whole class is called by the name ofjuices or saps. the unequal admixture of these fluids creates a varietyof species; most of them are nameless, but four which are of a fiery natureare clearly distinguished and have names. first, there is wine, whichwarms the soul as well as the body: secondly, there is the oily nature,which is smooth and divides the visual ray, and for this reasonis bright and shining and of a glistening appearance, including pitch,the juice of the castor berry, oil itself, and other things of a like kind:thirdly, there is the class of substances which expand the contractedparts of the mouth, until they

return to their natural state, and by reasonof this property create sweetness;—these are included under thegeneral name of honey: and, lastly, there is a frothy nature, which differsfrom all juices, having a burning quality which dissolves the flesh;it is called opos (a vegetable acid). as to the kinds of earth, that which is filteredthrough water passes into stone in the following manner:—thewater which mixes with the earth and is broken up in the process changesinto air, and taking this form mounts into its own place. but as thereis no surrounding vacuum it

thrusts away the neighbouring air, and thisbeing rendered heavy, and, when it is displaced, having been poured aroundthe mass of earth, forcibly compresses it and drives it intothe vacant space whence the new air had come up; and the earth when compressedby the air into an indissoluble union with water becomes rock.the fairer sort is that which is made up of equal and similar partsand is transparent; that which has the opposite qualities is inferior.but when all the watery part is suddenly drawn out by fire, a morebrittle substance is formed, to which we give the name of pottery. sometimesalso moisture may

remain, and the earth which has been fusedby fire becomes, when cool, a certain stone of a black colour. a likeseparation of the water which had been copiously mingled with themmay occur in two substances composed of finer particles of earth and ofa briny nature; out of either of them a half-solid-body is then formed,soluble in water—the one, soda, which is used for purging awayoil and earth, the other, salt, which harmonizes so well in combinationspleasing to the palate, and is, as the law testifies, a substancedear to the gods. the compounds of earth and water are not solubleby water, but by fire only,

and for this reason:—neither fire nor airmelt masses of earth; for their particles, being smaller than the intersticesin its structure, have plenty of room to move without forcingtheir way, and so they leave the earth unmelted and undissolved; but particlesof water, which are larger, force a passage, and dissolve andmelt the earth. wherefore earth when not consolidated by force is dissolvedby water only; when consolidated, by nothing but fire; for thisis the only body which can find an entrance. the cohesion of water again,when very strong, is dissolved by fire only—when weaker, theneither by air or fire—the

former entering the interstices, and the latterpenetrating even the triangles. but nothing can dissolve air, whenstrongly condensed, which does not reach the elements or triangles;or if not strongly condensed, then only fire can dissolve it. as to bodiescomposed of earth and water, while the water occupies the vacantinterstices of the earth in them which are compressed by force, theparticles of water which approach them from without, finding no entrance,flow around the entire mass and leave it undissolved; but the particlesof fire, entering into the interstices of the water, do to the waterwhat water does to earth

and fire to air (the text seems to be corrupt.),and are the sole causes of the compound body of earth and water liquefyingand becoming fluid. now these bodies are of two kinds; some ofthem, such as glass and the fusible sort of stones, have less water thanthey have earth; on the other hand, substances of the nature of waxand incense have more of water entering into their composition. i have thus shown the various classes of bodiesas they are diversified by their forms and combinations and changesinto one another, and now i must endeavour to set forth their affectionsand the causes of them. in

the first place, the bodies which i have beendescribing are necessarily objects of sense. but we have not yet consideredthe origin of flesh, or what belongs to flesh, or of that part ofthe soul which is mortal. and these things cannot be adequately explainedwithout also explaining the affections which are concerned with sensation,nor the latter without the former: and yet to explain them togetheris hardly possible; for which reason we must assume first one or theother and afterwards examine the nature of our hypothesis. in order,then, that the affections may follow regularly after theelements, let us presuppose

the existence of body and soul. first, let us enquire what we mean by sayingthat fire is hot; and about this we may reason from the dividing or cuttingpower which it exercises on our bodies. we all of us feel that fireis sharp; and we may further consider the fineness of the sides, and thesharpness of the angles, and the smallness of the particles, and theswiftness of the motion—all this makes the action of fire violent andsharp, so that it cuts whatever it meets. and we must not forgetthat the original figure of fire (i.e. the pyramid), more than any otherform, has a dividing power

which cuts our bodies into small pieces (kepmatizei),and thus naturally produces that affection which we call heat;and hence the origin of the name (thepmos, kepma). now, the oppositeof this is sufficiently manifest; nevertheless we will not fail todescribe it. for the larger particles of moisture which surround the body,entering in and driving out the lesser, but not being able to taketheir places, compress the moist principle in us; and this from beingunequal and disturbed, is forced by them into a state of rest, whichis due to equability and compression. but things which are contractedcontrary to nature are

by nature at war, and force themselves apart;and to this war and convulsion the name of shivering and tremblingis given; and the whole affection and the cause of the affection areboth termed cold. that is called hard to which our flesh yields,and soft which yields to our flesh; and things are also termed hardand soft relatively to one another. that which yields has a small base;but that which rests on quadrangular bases is firmly posed and belongsto the class which offers the greatest resistance; so too does thatwhich is the most compact and therefore most repellent. the nature of thelight and the heavy will be

best understood when examined in connexionwith our notions of above and below; for it is quite a mistake to supposethat the universe is parted into two regions, separate from and oppositeto each other, the one a lower to which all things tend which haveany bulk, and an upper to which things only ascend against their will.for as the universe is in the form of a sphere, all the extremities,being equidistant from the centre, are equally extremities, and the centre,which is equidistant from them, is equally to be regarded as theopposite of them all. such being the nature of the world, when a personsays that any of these

points is above or below, may he not be justlycharged with using an improper expression? for the centre of theworld cannot be rightly called either above or below, but is the centreand nothing else; and the circumference is not the centre, and hasin no one part of itself a different relation to the centre from whatit has in any of the opposite parts. indeed, when it is in every directionsimilar, how can one rightly give to it names which imply opposition?for if there were any solid body in equipoise at the centre of theuniverse, there would be nothing to draw it to this extreme ratherthan to that, for they are

all perfectly similar; and if a person wereto go round the world in a circle, he would often, when standing atthe antipodes of his former position, speak of the same point as aboveand below; for, as i was saying just now, to speak of the whole whichis in the form of a globe as having one part above and another belowis not like a sensible man. the reason why these names are used, and thecircumstances under which they are ordinarily applied by us to the divisionof the heavens, may be elucidated by the following supposition:—ifa person were to stand in that part of the universe which is theappointed place of fire, and

where there is the great mass of fire to whichfiery bodies gather—if, i say, he were to ascend thither, and, havingthe power to do this, were to abstract particles of fire and put themin scales and weigh them, and then, raising the balance, were to draw thefire by force towards the uncongenial element of the air, it would bevery evident that he could compel the smaller mass more readily thanthe larger; for when two things are simultaneously raised by one andthe same power, the smaller body must necessarily yield to the superiorpower with less reluctance than the larger; and the larger body is calledheavy and said to

tend downwards, and the smaller body is calledlight and said to tend upwards. and we may detect ourselves who areupon the earth doing precisely the same thing. for we often separateearthy natures, and sometimes earth itself, and draw them intothe uncongenial element of air by force and contrary to nature, bothclinging to their kindred elements. but that which is smaller yieldsto the impulse given by us towards the dissimilar element more easilythan the larger; and so we call the former light, and the place towardswhich it is impelled we call above, and the contrary state and placewe call heavy and below

respectively. now the relations of these mustnecessarily vary, because the principal masses of the different elementshold opposite positions; for that which is light, heavy, below or abovein one place will be found to be and become contrary and transverseand every way diverse in relation to that which is light, heavy, belowor above in an opposite place. and about all of them this has to beconsidered:—that the tendency of each towards its kindred elementmakes the body which is moved heavy, and the place towards which themotion tends below, but things which have an opposite tendency wecall by an opposite name. such

are the causes which we assign to these phenomena.as to the smooth and the rough, any one who sees them can explainthe reason of them to another. for roughness is hardness mingledwith irregularity, and smoothness is produced by the joint effectof uniformity and density. end of part 5part 6 timaeus continues the most important of the affections whichconcern the whole body remains to be considered—that is, the causeof pleasure and pain in the perceptions of which i have been speaking,and in all other things which

are perceived by sense through the parts ofthe body, and have both pains and pleasures attendant on them. letus imagine the causes of every affection, whether of sense or not,to be of the following nature, remembering that we have already distinguishedbetween the nature which is easy and which is hard to move; for thisis the direction in which we must hunt the prey which we mean to take.a body which is of a nature to be easily moved, on receiving an impressionhowever slight, spreads abroad the motion in a circle, the parts communicatingwith each other, until at last, reaching the principle of mind,they announce the quality

of the agent. but a body of the opposite kind,being immobile, and not extending to the surrounding region, merelyreceives the impression, and does not stir any of the neighbouring parts;and since the parts do not distribute the original impression to otherparts, it has no effect of motion on the whole animal, and thereforeproduces no effect on the patient. this is true of the bones and hairand other more earthy parts of the human body; whereas what was said aboverelates mainly to sight and hearing, because they have in them thegreatest amount of fire and air. now we must conceive of pleasureand pain in this way. an

impression produced in us contrary to natureand violent, if sudden, is painful; and, again, the sudden returnto nature is pleasant; but a gentle and gradual return is imperceptibleand vice versa. on the other hand the impression of sense which is mosteasily produced is most readily felt, but is not accompanied by pleasureor pain; such, for example, are the affections of the sight,which, as we said above, is a body naturally uniting with our body in theday-time; for cuttings and burnings and other affections which happento the sight do not give pain, nor is there pleasure when the sightreturns to its natural state;

but the sensations are clearest and strongestaccording to the manner in which the eye is affected by the object, anditself strikes and touches it; there is no violence either in the contractionor dilation of the eye. but bodies formed of larger particlesyield to the agent only with a struggle; and then they impart their motionsto the whole and cause pleasure and pain—pain when alienated fromtheir natural conditions, and pleasure when restored to them. thingswhich experience gradual withdrawings and emptyings of their nature,and great and sudden replenishments, fail to perceive the emptying,but are sensible of the

replenishment; and so they occasion no pain,but the greatest pleasure, to the mortal part of the soul, as is manifestin the case of perfumes. but things which are changed all of a sudden,and only gradually and with difficulty return to their own nature,have effects in every way opposite to the former, as is evidentin the case of burnings and cuttings of the body. thus have we discussed the general affectionsof the whole body, and the names of the agents which produce them.and now i will endeavour to speak of the affections of particular parts,and the causes and agents

of them, as far as i am able. in the firstplace let us set forth what was omitted when we were speaking of juices,concerning the affections peculiar to the tongue. these too, like mostof the other affections, appear to be caused by certain contractionsand dilations, but they have besides more of roughness and smoothnessthan is found in other affections; for whenever earthy particlesenter into the small veins which are the testing instruments of the tongue,reaching to the heart, and fall upon the moist, delicate portionsof flesh—when, as they are dissolved, they contract and dry up thelittle veins, they are

astringent if they are rougher, but if notso rough, then only harsh. those of them which are of an abstergent nature,and purge the whole surface of the tongue, if they do it in excess,and so encroach as to consume some part of the flesh itself, likepotash and soda, are all termed bitter. but the particles which aredeficient in the alkaline quality, and which cleanse only moderately,are called salt, and having no bitterness or roughness, are regarded asrather agreeable than otherwise. bodies which share in and are madesmooth by the heat of the mouth, and which are inflamed, and againin turn inflame that which

heats them, and which are so light that theyare carried upwards to the sensations of the head, and cut all that comesin their way, by reason of these qualities in them, are all termedpungent. but when these same particles, refined by putrefaction, enterinto the narrow veins, and are duly proportioned to the particles ofearth and air which are there, they set them whirling about one another,and while they are in a whirl cause them to dash against and enter intoone another, and so form hollows surrounding the particles that enter—whichwatery vessels of air (for a film of moisture, sometimes earthy,sometimes pure, is spread

around the air) are hollow spheres of water;and those of them which are pure, are transparent, and are called bubbles,while those composed of the earthy liquid, which is in a stateof general agitation and effervescence, are said to boil or ferment—ofall these affections the cause is termed acid. and there is the oppositeaffection arising from an opposite cause, when the mass of enteringparticles, immersed in the moisture of the mouth, is congenial to thetongue, and smooths and oils over the roughness, and relaxes the partswhich are unnaturally contracted, and contracts the parts whichare relaxed, and disposes

them all according to their nature;—thatsort of remedy of violent affections is pleasant and agreeable to everyman, and has the name sweet. but enough of this. the faculty of smell does not admit of differencesof kind; for all smells are of a half-formed nature, and noelement is so proportioned as to have any smell. the veins about thenose are too narrow to admit earth and water, and too wide to detain fireand air; and for this reason no one ever perceives the smell ofany of them; but smells always proceed from bodies that are damp, or putrefying,or liquefying, or

evaporating, and are perceptible only in theintermediate state, when water is changing into air and air into water;and all of them are either vapour or mist. that which is passingout of air into water is mist, and that which is passing from waterinto air is vapour; and hence all smells are thinner than water and thickerthan air. the proof of this is, that when there is any obstructionto the respiration, and a man draws in his breath by force, then nosmell filters through, but the air without the smell alone penetrates. whereforethe varieties of smell have no name, and they have not many, or definiteand simple kinds;

but they are distinguished only as painfuland pleasant, the one sort irritating and disturbing the whole cavitywhich is situated between the head and the navel, the other having a soothinginfluence, and restoring this same region to an agreeable and naturalcondition. in considering the third kind of sense, hearing,we must speak of the causes in which it originates. we may in generalassume sound to be a blow which passes through the ears, and istransmitted by means of the air, the brain, and the blood, to the soul,and that hearing is the vibration of this blow, which begins in thehead and ends in the region

of the liver. the sound which moves swiftlyis acute, and the sound which moves slowly is grave, and that whichis regular is equable and smooth, and the reverse is harsh. a greatbody of sound is loud, and a small body of sound the reverse. respectingthe harmonies of sound i must hereafter speak. there is a fourth class of sensible things,having many intricate varieties, which must now be distinguished.they are called by the general name of colours, and are a flame whichemanates from every sort of body, and has particles corresponding tothe sense of sight. i have

spoken already, in what has preceded, of thecauses which generate sight, and in this place it will be naturaland suitable to give a rational theory of colours. of the particles coming from other bodieswhich fall upon the sight, some are smaller and some are larger, andsome are equal to the parts of the sight itself. those which are equal areimperceptible, and we call them transparent. the larger produce contraction,the smaller dilation, in the sight, exercising a power akin to thatof hot and cold bodies on the flesh, or of astringent bodies on thetongue, or of those heating

bodies which we termed pungent. white andblack are similar effects of contraction and dilation in another sphere,and for this reason have a different appearance. wherefore, we oughtto term white that which dilates the visual ray, and the opposite ofthis is black. there is also a swifter motion of a different sort of firewhich strikes and dilates the ray of sight until it reaches the eyes,forcing a way through their passages and melting them, and eliciting fromthem a union of fire and water which we call tears, being itself anopposite fire which comes to them from an opposite direction—the innerfire flashes forth like

lightning, and the outer finds a way in andis extinguished in the moisture, and all sorts of colours are generatedby the mixture. this affection is termed dazzling, and the objectwhich produces it is called bright and flashing. there is anothersort of fire which is intermediate, and which reaches and mingleswith the moisture of the eye without flashing; and in this, the firemingling with the ray of the moisture, produces a colour like blood,to which we give the name of red. a bright hue mingled with red andwhite gives the colour called auburn (greek). the law of proportion, however,according to which the

several colours are formed, even if a manknew he would be foolish in telling, for he could not give any necessaryreason, nor indeed any tolerable or probable explanation of them.again, red, when mingled with black and white, becomes purple, but it becomesumber (greek) when the colours are burnt as well as mingled and theblack is more thoroughly mixed with them. flame-colour (greek) is producedby a union of auburn and dun (greek), and dun by an admixture ofblack and white; pale yellow (greek), by an admixture of white and auburn.white and bright meeting, and falling upon a full black, become darkblue (greek), and when dark

blue mingles with white, a light blue (greek)colour is formed, as flame-colour with black makes leek green (greek).there will be no difficulty in seeing how and by what mixturesthe colours derived from these are made according to the rules of probability.he, however, who should attempt to verify all this by experiment,would forget the difference of the human and divine nature.for god only has the knowledge and also the power which are ableto combine many things into one and again resolve the one into many. butno man either is or ever will be able to accomplish either the oneor the other operation.

these are the elements, thus of necessitythen subsisting, which the creator of the fairest and best of createdthings associated with himself, when he made the self-sufficing andmost perfect god, using the necessary causes as his ministers in the accomplishmentof his work, but himself contriving the good in all hiscreations. wherefore we may distinguish two sorts of causes, the one divineand the other necessary, and may seek for the divine in all things,as far as our nature admits, with a view to the blessed life; but the necessarykind only for the sake of the divine, considering that withoutthem and when isolated from

them, these higher things for which we lookcannot be apprehended or received or in any way shared by us. seeing, then, that we have now prepared forour use the various classes of causes which are the material out of whichthe remainder of our discourse must be woven, just as wood is thematerial of the carpenter, let us revert in a few words to the pointat which we began, and then endeavour to add on a suitable ending to thebeginning of our tale. as i said at first, when all things were indisorder god created in each thing in relation to itself, and in allthings in relation to each

other, all the measures and harmonies whichthey could possibly receive. for in those days nothing had any proportionexcept by accident; nor did any of the things which now have names deserveto be named at all—as, for example, fire, water, and the rest ofthe elements. all these the creator first set in order, and out of themhe constructed the universe, which was a single animal comprehending initself all other animals, mortal and immortal. now of the divine, hehimself was the creator, but the creation of the mortal he committedto his offspring. and they, imitating him, received from him the immortalprinciple of the soul; and

around this they proceeded to fashion a mortalbody, and made it to be the vehicle of the soul, and constructedwithin the body a soul of another nature which was mortal, subject toterrible and irresistible affections,—first of all, pleasure, thegreatest incitement to evil; then, pain, which deters from good; also rashnessand fear, two foolish counsellors, anger hard to be appeased,and hope easily led astray;—these they mingled with irrationalsense and with all-daring love according to necessary laws, and so framedman. wherefore, fearing to pollute the divine any more than was absolutelyunavoidable, they

gave to the mortal nature a separate habitationin another part of the body, placing the neck between them to bethe isthmus and boundary, which they constructed between the head andbreast, to keep them apart. and in the breast, and in what is termed thethorax, they encased the mortal soul; and as the one part of this wassuperior and the other inferior they divided the cavity of the thoraxinto two parts, as the women's and men's apartments are divided inhouses, and placed the midriff to be a wall of partition betweenthem. that part of the inferior soul which is endowed with courageand passion and loves

contention they settled nearer the head, midwaybetween the midriff and the neck, in order that it might be underthe rule of reason and might join with it in controlling and restrainingthe desires when they are no longer willing of their own accord to obeythe word of command issuing from the citadel. the heart, the knot of the veins and the fountainof the blood which races through all the limbs, was set in theplace of guard, that when the might of passion was roused by reasonmaking proclamation of any wrong assailing them from without or beingperpetrated by the desires

within, quickly the whole power of feelingin the body, perceiving these commands and threats, might obey andfollow through every turn and alley, and thus allow the principle of thebest to have the command in all of them. but the gods, foreknowing thatthe palpitation of the heart in the expectation of danger and the swellingand excitement of passion was caused by fire, formed and implanted asa supporter to the heart the lung, which was, in the first place, softand bloodless, and also had within hollows like the pores of a sponge,in order that by receiving the breath and the drink, it might give coolnessand the power of

respiration and alleviate the heat. whereforethey cut the air-channels leading to the lung, and placed the lung aboutthe heart as a soft spring, that, when passion was rife within,the heart, beating against a yielding body, might be cooled and sufferless, and might thus become more ready to join with passion in the serviceof reason. the part of the soul which desires meats anddrinks and the other things of which it has need by reason of the bodilynature, they placed between the midriff and the boundary of the navel,contriving in all this region a sort of manger for the food of the body;and there they bound it down

like a wild animal which was chained up withman, and must be nourished if man was to exist. they appointed this lowercreation his place here in order that he might be always feeding atthe manger, and have his dwelling as far as might be from the council-chamber,making as little noise and disturbance as possible, and permittingthe best part to advise quietly for the good of the whole.and knowing that this lower principle in man would not comprehend reason,and even if attaining to some degree of perception would never naturallycare for rational notions, but that it would be led away byphantoms and visions night

and day,—to be a remedy for this, god combinedwith it the liver, and placed it in the house of the lower nature,contriving that it should be solid and smooth, and bright and sweet,and should also have a bitter quality, in order that the power of thought,which proceeds from the mind, might be reflected as in a mirror whichreceives likenesses of objects and gives back images of them to thesight; and so might strike terror into the desires, when, making useof the bitter part of the liver, to which it is akin, it comes threateningand invading, and diffusing this bitter element swiftly throughthe whole liver produces

colours like bile, and contracting every partmakes it wrinkled and rough; and twisting out of its right placeand contorting the lobe and closing and shutting up the vessels and gates,causes pain and loathing. and the converse happens when somegentle inspiration of the understanding pictures images of an oppositecharacter, and allays the bile and bitterness by refusing to stir ortouch the nature opposed to itself, but by making use of the naturalsweetness of the liver, corrects all things and makes them to be rightand smooth and free, and renders the portion of the soul which residesabout the liver happy

and joyful, enabling it to pass the nightin peace, and to practise divination in sleep, inasmuch as it has noshare in mind and reason. for the authors of our being, remembering thecommand of their father when he bade them create the human race as goodas they could, that they might correct our inferior parts and makethem to attain a measure of truth, placed in the liver the seat of divination.and herein is a proof that god has given the art of divination notto the wisdom, but to the foolishness of man. no man, when in his wits,attains prophetic truth and inspiration; but when he receives theinspired word, either his

intelligence is enthralled in sleep, or heis demented by some distemper or possession. and he who would understandwhat he remembers to have been said, whether in a dream or when he wasawake, by the prophetic and inspired nature, or would determine byreason the meaning of the apparitions which he has seen, and what indicationsthey afford to this man or that, of past, present or futuregood and evil, must first recover his wits. but, while he continuesdemented, he cannot judge of the visions which he sees or the wordswhich he utters; the ancient saying is very true, that 'only a man whohas his wits can act or judge

about himself and his own affairs.' and forthis reason it is customary to appoint interpreters to be judges of thetrue inspiration. some persons call them prophets; they are quiteunaware that they are only the expositors of dark sayings and visions,and are not to be called prophets at all, but only interpreters ofprophecy. such is the nature of the liver, which isplaced as we have described in order that it may give prophetic intimations.during the life of each individual these intimations are plainer,but after his death the liver becomes blind, and delivers oracles too obscureto be intelligible. the

neighbouring organ (the spleen) is situatedon the left-hand side, and is constructed with a view of keeping theliver bright and pure,—like a napkin, always ready prepared and at handto clean the mirror. and hence, when any impurities arise in the regionof the liver by reason of disorders of the body, the loose nature ofthe spleen, which is composed of a hollow and bloodless tissue, receivesthem all and clears them away, and when filled with the unclean matter,swells and festers, but, again, when the body is purged, settles downinto the same place as before, and is humbled.

concerning the soul, as to which part is mortaland which divine, and how and why they are separated, and wherelocated, if god acknowledges that we have spoken the truth, then, and thenonly, can we be confident; still, we may venture to assert that whathas been said by us is probable, and will be rendered more probableby investigation. let us assume thus much. the creation of the rest of the body followsnext in order, and this we may investigate in a similar manner. and itappears to be very meet that the body should be framed on the followingprinciples:—

the authors of our race were aware that weshould be intemperate in eating and drinking, and take a good dealmore than was necessary or proper, by reason of gluttony. in order thenthat disease might not quickly destroy us, and lest our mortal raceshould perish without fulfilling its end—intending to provideagainst this, the gods made what is called the lower belly, to be a receptaclefor the superfluous meat and drink, and formed the convolutionof the bowels, so that the food might be prevented from passing quicklythrough and compelling the body to require more food, thus producinginsatiable gluttony, and

making the whole race an enemy to philosophyand music, and rebellious against the divinest element within us. the bones and flesh, and other similar partsof us, were made as follows. the first principle of all of themwas the generation of the marrow. for the bonds of life which unitethe soul with the body are made fast there, and they are the root andfoundation of the human race. the marrow itself is created out of othermaterials: god took such of the primary triangles as were straight andsmooth, and were adapted by their perfection to produce fire and water,and air and earth—these, i

say, he separated from their kinds, and minglingthem in due proportions with one another, made the marrow out of themto be a universal seed of the whole race of mankind; and in this seedhe then planted and enclosed the souls, and in the original distributiongave to the marrow as many and various forms as the different kinds ofsouls were hereafter to receive. that which, like a field, was toreceive the divine seed, he made round every way, and called that portionof the marrow, brain, intending that, when an animal was perfected,the vessel containing this substance should be the head; but that whichwas intended to contain

the remaining and mortal part of the soulhe distributed into figures at once round and elongated, and he called themall by the name 'marrow'; and to these, as to anchors, fastening thebonds of the whole soul, he proceeded to fashion around them the entireframework of our body, constructing for the marrow, first of alla complete covering of bone. bone was composed by him in the followingmanner. having sifted pure and smooth earth he kneaded it and wetted it withmarrow, and after that he put it into fire and then into water, andonce more into fire and again into water—in this way by frequent transfersfrom one to the other he

made it insoluble by either. out of this hefashioned, as in a lathe, a globe made of bone, which he placed aroundthe brain, and in this he left a narrow opening; and around the marrowof the neck and back he formed vertebrae which he placed underone another like pivots, beginning at the head and extending throughthe whole of the trunk. thus wishing to preserve the entire seed,he enclosed it in a stone-like casing, inserting joints, and using in theformation of them the power of the other or diverse as an intermediatenature, that they might have motion and flexure. then again, consideringthat the bone would be too

brittle and inflexible, and when heated andagain cooled would soon mortify and destroy the seed within—havingthis in view, he contrived the sinews and the flesh, that so bindingall the members together by the sinews, which admitted of being stretchedand relaxed about the vertebrae, he might thus make the body capableof flexion and extension, while the flesh would serve as a protectionagainst the summer heat and against the winter cold, and also againstfalls, softly and easily yielding to external bodies, like articlesmade of felt; and containing in itself a warm moisture which in summerexudes and makes the surface

damp, would impart a natural coolness to thewhole body; and again in winter by the help of this internal warmthwould form a very tolerable defence against the frost which surroundsit and attacks it from without. he who modelled us, considering thesethings, mixed earth with fire and water and blended them; and makinga ferment of acid and salt, he mingled it with them and formed soft andsucculent flesh. as for the sinews, he made them of a mixture of boneand unfermented flesh, attempered so as to be in a mean, and gavethem a yellow colour; wherefore the sinews have a firmer and moreglutinous nature than flesh,

but a softer and moister nature than the bones.with these god covered the bones and marrow, binding them togetherby sinews, and then enshrouded them all in an upper covering offlesh. the more living and sensitive of the bones he enclosed in thethinnest film of flesh, and those which had the least life within themin the thickest and most solid flesh. so again on the joints of thebones, where reason indicated that no more was required, he placed onlya thin covering of flesh, that it might not interfere with the flexionof our bodies and make them unwieldy because difficult to move; and alsothat it might not, by being

crowded and pressed and matted together, destroysensation by reason of its hardness, and impair the memory and dullthe edge of intelligence. wherefore also the thighs and the shanks andthe hips, and the bones of the arms and the forearms, and other partswhich have no joints, and the inner bones, which on account of the rarityof the soul in the marrow are destitute of reason—all these are abundantlyprovided with flesh; but such as have mind in them are in generalless fleshy, except where the creator has made some part solelyof flesh in order to give sensation,—as, for example, the tongue.but commonly this is not the

case. for the nature which comes into beingand grows up in us by a law of necessity, does not admit of the combinationof solid bone and much flesh with acute perceptions. more than anyother part the framework of the head would have had them, if they couldhave co-existed, and the human race, having a strong and fleshy andsinewy head, would have had a life twice or many times as long as it nowhas, and also more healthy and free from pain. but our creators, consideringwhether they should make a longer-lived race which was worse,or a shorter-lived race which was better, came to the conclusion that everyone ought to prefer a

shorter span of life, which was better, toa longer one, which was worse; and therefore they covered the headwith thin bone, but not with flesh and sinews, since it had no joints;and thus the head was added, having more wisdom and sensation than therest of the body, but also being in every man far weaker. for these reasonsand after this manner god placed the sinews at the extremity ofthe head, in a circle round the neck, and glued them together by the principleof likeness and fastened the extremities of the jawbones tothem below the face, and the other sinews he dispersed throughout the body,fastening limb to limb.

the framers of us framed the mouth, as nowarranged, having teeth and tongue and lips, with a view to the necessaryand the good contriving the way in for necessary purposes, the wayout for the best purposes; for that is necessary which enters in andgives food to the body; but the river of speech, which flows out of aman and ministers to the intelligence, is the fairest and noblest ofall streams. still the head could neither be left a bare frame of bones,on account of the extremes of heat and cold in the different seasons,nor yet be allowed to be wholly covered, and so become dull andsenseless by reason of an

overgrowth of flesh. the fleshy nature wasnot therefore wholly dried up, but a large sort of peel was parted offand remained over, which is now called the skin. this met and grewby the help of the cerebral moisture, and became the circular envelopmentof the head. and the moisture, rising up under the sutures, wateredand closed in the skin upon the crown, forming a sort of knot. thediversity of the sutures was caused by the power of the courses of thesoul and of the food, and the more these struggled against one another themore numerous they became, and fewer if the struggle were less violent.this skin the divine power

pierced all round with fire, and out of thepunctures which were thus made the moisture issued forth, and the liquidand heat which was pure came away, and a mixed part which was composedof the same material as the skin, and had a fineness equal to thepunctures, was borne up by its own impulse and extended far outside thehead, but being too slow to escape, was thrust back by the externalair, and rolled up underneath the skin, where it took root. thus the hairsprang up in the skin, being akin to it because it is like threads of leather,but rendered harder and closer through the pressure of the cold,by which each hair, while

in process of separation from the skin, iscompressed and cooled. wherefore the creator formed the head hairy,making use of the causes which i have mentioned, and reflecting alsothat instead of flesh the brain needed the hair to be a light coveringor guard, which would give shade in summer and shelter in winter, andat the same time would not impede our quickness of perception. from thecombination of sinew, skin, and bone, in the structure of the finger,there arises a triple compound, which, when dried up, takes theform of one hard skin partaking of all three natures, and was fabricatedby these second

causes, but designed by mind which is theprincipal cause with an eye to the future. for our creators well knewthat women and other animals would some day be framed out of men, and theyfurther knew that many animals would require the use of nails formany purposes; wherefore they fashioned in men at their first creation therudiments of nails. for this purpose and for these reasons they causedskin, hair, and nails to grow at the extremities of the limbs. end of part 6timaeus continues and now that all the parts and members ofthe mortal animal had come

together, since its life of necessity consistedof fire and breath, and it therefore wasted away by dissolutionand depletion, the gods contrived the following remedy: they mingleda nature akin to that of man with other forms and perceptions, andthus created another kind of animal. these are the trees and plantsand seeds which have been improved by cultivation and are now domesticatedamong us; anciently there were only the wild kinds, which areolder than the cultivated. for everything that partakes of life may be trulycalled a living being, and the animal of which we are now speaking partakesof the third kind of

soul, which is said to be seated between themidriff and the navel, having no part in opinion or reason or mind,but only in feelings of pleasure and pain and the desires which accompanythem. for this nature is always in a passive state, revolving inand about itself, repelling the motion from without and using its own,and accordingly is not endowed by nature with the power of observingor reflecting on its own concerns. wherefore it lives and does notdiffer from a living being, but is fixed and rooted in the samespot, having no power of self-motion.

now after the superior powers had createdall these natures to be food for us who are of the inferior nature, theycut various channels through the body as through a garden, that it mightbe watered as from a running stream. in the first place, they cut two hiddenchannels or veins down the back where the skin and the flesh join,which answered severally to the right and left side of the body. thesethey let down along the backbone, so as to have the marrow of generationbetween them, where it was most likely to flourish, and in orderthat the stream coming down from above might flow freely to the otherparts, and equalize the

irrigation. in the next place, they dividedthe veins about the head, and interlacing them, they sent them in oppositedirections; those coming from the right side they sent to theleft of the body, and those from the left they diverted towards the right,so that they and the skin might together form a bond which should fastenthe head to the body, since the crown of the head was not encircledby sinews; and also in order that the sensations from both sidesmight be distributed over the whole body. and next, they ordered the water-coursesof the body in a manner which i will describe, and which willbe more easily understood

if we begin by admitting that all things whichhave lesser parts retain the greater, but the greater cannot retainthe lesser. now of all natures fire has the smallest parts, and thereforepenetrates through earth and water and air and their compounds,nor can anything hold it. and a similar principle applies to the humanbelly; for when meats and drinks enter it, it holds them, but it cannothold air and fire, because the particles of which they consist are smallerthan its own structure. these elements, therefore, god employed forthe sake of distributing moisture from the belly into the veins, weavingtogether a network

of fire and air like a weel, having at theentrance two lesser weels; further he constructed one of these with twoopenings, and from the lesser weels he extended cords reaching allround to the extremities of the network. all the interior of the net hemade of fire, but the lesser weels and their cavity, of air. the networkhe took and spread over the newly-formed animal in the following manner:—helet the lesser weels pass into the mouth; there were two of them,and one he let down by the air-pipes into the lungs, the other by theside of the air-pipes into the belly. the former he divided into twobranches, both of which he

made to meet at the channels of the nose,so that when the way through the mouth did not act, the streams of themouth as well were replenished through the nose. with the other cavity (i.e.of the greater weel) he enveloped the hollow parts of the body, andat one time he made all this to flow into the lesser weels, quite gently,for they are composed of air, and at another time he caused the lesserweels to flow back again; and the net he made to find a way in and outthrough the pores of the body, and the rays of fire which are boundfast within followed the passage of the air either way, never at anytime ceasing so long as the

mortal being holds together. this process,as we affirm, the name-giver named inspiration and expiration. and allthis movement, active as well as passive, takes place in order thatthe body, being watered and cooled, may receive nourishment and life;for when the respiration is going in and out, and the fire, which is fastbound within, follows it, and ever and anon moving to and fro, entersthrough the belly and reaches the meat and drink, it dissolves them,and dividing them into small portions and guiding them through thepassages where it goes, pumps them as from a fountain into the channelsof the veins, and makes

the stream of the veins flow through the bodyas through a conduit. let us once more consider the phenomena ofrespiration, and enquire into the causes which have made it what it is.they are as follows:—seeing that there is no such thing as a vacuum intowhich any of those things which are moved can enter, and the breathis carried from us into the external air, the next point is, as will beclear to every one, that it does not go into a vacant space, but pushesits neighbour out of its place, and that which is thrust out in turndrives out its neighbour; and in this way everything of necessity atlast comes round to that

place from whence the breath came forth, andenters in there, and following the breath, fills up the vacantspace; and this goes on like the rotation of a wheel, because there canbe no such thing as a vacuum. wherefore also the breast and the lungs, whenthey emit the breath, are replenished by the air which surroundsthe body and which enters in through the pores of the flesh and is drivenround in a circle; and again, the air which is sent away and passesout through the body forces the breath inwards through the passage ofthe mouth and the nostrils. now the origin of this movement may be supposedto be as follows. in the

interior of every animal the hottest partis that which is around the blood and veins; it is in a manner an internalfountain of fire, which we compare to the network of a creel, beingwoven all of fire and extended through the centre of the body, whilethe outer parts are composed of air. now we must admit that heatnaturally proceeds outward to its own place and to its kindred element;and as there are two exits for the heat, the one out through the body,and the other through the mouth and nostrils, when it moves towardsthe one, it drives round the air at the other, and that which is drivenround falls into the fire

and becomes warm, and that which goes forthis cooled. but when the heat changes its place, and the particles at theother exit grow warmer, the hotter air inclining in that direction andcarried towards its native element, fire, pushes round the air at theother; and this being affected in the same way and communicatingthe same impulse, a circular motion swaying to and fro is produced by thedouble process, which we call inspiration and expiration. the phenomena of medical cupping-glasses andof the swallowing of drink and of the projection of bodies, whether dischargedin the air or bowled

along the ground, are to be investigated ona similar principle; and swift and slow sounds, which appear tobe high and low, and are sometimes discordant on account of their inequality,and then again harmonical on account of the equality of themotion which they excite in us. for when the motions of the antecedentswifter sounds begin to pause and the two are equalized, the slower soundsovertake the swifter and then propel them. when they overtake themthey do not intrude a new and discordant motion, but introduce the beginningsof a slower, which answers to the swifter as it dies away, thusproducing a single mixed

expression out of high and low, whence arisesa pleasure which even the unwise feel, and which to the wise becomesa higher sort of delight, being an imitation of divine harmony in mortalmotions. moreover, as to the flowing of water, the fall of the thunderbolt,and the marvels that are observed about the attraction of amberand the heraclean stones,—in none of these cases is there any attraction;but he who investigates rightly, will find that such wonderful phenomenaare attributable to the combination of certain conditions—the non-existenceof a vacuum, the fact that objects push one another round,and that they change places,

passing severally into their proper positionsas they are divided or combined. such as we have seen, is the nature and suchare the causes of respiration,—the subject in which this discussionoriginated. for the fire cuts the food and following the breathsurges up within, fire and breath rising together and filling the veinsby drawing up out of the belly and pouring into them the cut portionsof the food; and so the streams of food are kept flowing through thewhole body in all animals. and fresh cuttings from kindred substances,whether the fruits of the

earth or herb of the field, which god plantedto be our daily food, acquire all sorts of colours by their inter-mixture;but red is the most pervading of them, being created by the cuttingaction of fire and by the impression which it makes on a moist substance;and hence the liquid which circulates in the body has a coloursuch as we have described. the liquid itself we call blood, which nourishesthe flesh and the whole body, whence all parts are watered and emptyplaces filled. now the process of repletion and evacuationis effected after the manner of the universal motion by which allkindred substances are drawn

towards one another. for the external elementswhich surround us are always causing us to consume away, and distributingand sending off like to like; the particles of blood, too, whichare divided and contained within the frame of the animal as in a sortof heaven, are compelled to imitate the motion of the universe. each,therefore, of the divided parts within us, being carried to its kindrednature, replenishes the void. when more is taken away than flows in,then we decay, and when less, we grow and increase. the frame of the entire creature when younghas the triangles of each

kind new, and may be compared to the keelof a vessel which is just off the stocks; they are locked firmly togetherand yet the whole mass is soft and delicate, being freshly formed ofmarrow and nurtured on milk. now when the triangles out of which meatsand drinks are composed come in from without, and are comprehended in thebody, being older and weaker than the triangles already there, theframe of the body gets the better of them and its newer triangles cutthem up, and so the animal grows great, being nourished by a multitudeof similar particles. but when the roots of the triangles are loosenedby having undergone many

conflicts with many things in the course oftime, they are no longer able to cut or assimilate the food which enters,but are themselves easily divided by the bodies which come infrom without. in this way every animal is overcome and decays, and thisaffection is called old age. and at last, when the bonds by whichthe triangles of the marrow are united no longer hold, and are partedby the strain of existence, they in turn loosen the bonds of the soul,and she, obtaining a natural release, flies away with joy. for that whichtakes place according to nature is pleasant, but that which is contraryto nature is painful. and

thus death, if caused by disease or producedby wounds, is painful and violent; but that sort of death which comeswith old age and fulfils the debt of nature is the easiest of deaths,and is accompanied with pleasure rather than with pain. now every one can see whence diseases arise.there are four natures out of which the body is compacted, earth andfire and water and air, and the unnatural excess or defect of these, orthe change of any of them from its own natural place into another, or—sincethere are more kinds than one of fire and of the other elements—theassumption by any of

these of a wrong kind, or any similar irregularity,produces disorders and diseases; for when any of them is producedor changed in a manner contrary to nature, the parts which were previouslycool grow warm, and those which were dry become moist, and thelight become heavy, and the heavy light; all sorts of changes occur. for,as we affirm, a thing can only remain the same with itself, wholeand sound, when the same is added to it, or subtracted from it, in thesame respect and in the same manner and in due proportion; and whatevercomes or goes away in violation of these laws causes all mannerof changes and infinite

diseases and corruptions. now there is a secondclass of structures which are also natural, and this affords asecond opportunity of observing diseases to him who would understandthem. for whereas marrow and bone and flesh and sinews are composedof the four elements, and the blood, though after another manner, is likewiseformed out of them, most diseases originate in the way which i havedescribed; but the worst of all owe their severity to the fact thatthe generation of these substances proceeds in a wrong order; theyare then destroyed. for the natural order is that the flesh and sinewsshould be made of blood, the

sinews out of the fibres to which they areakin, and the flesh out of the clots which are formed when the fibresare separated. and the glutinous and rich matter which comes awayfrom the sinews and the flesh, not only glues the flesh to the bones,but nourishes and imparts growth to the bone which surrounds the marrow;and by reason of the solidity of the bones, that which filtersthrough consists of the purest and smoothest and oiliest sort of triangles,dropping like dew from the bones and watering the marrow. now when eachprocess takes place in this order, health commonly results; when in theopposite order, disease. for

when the flesh becomes decomposed and sendsback the wasting substance into the veins, then an over-supply of bloodof diverse kinds, mingling with air in the veins, having variegated coloursand bitter properties, as well as acid and saline qualities, containsall sorts of bile and serum and phlegm. for all things go the wrongway, and having become corrupted, first they taint the blood itself,and then ceasing to give nourishment to the body they are carriedalong the veins in all directions, no longer preserving the orderof their natural courses, but at war with themselves, because they receiveno good from one another,

and are hostile to the abiding constitutionof the body, which they corrupt and dissolve. the oldest part of theflesh which is corrupted, being hard to decompose, from long burninggrows black, and from being everywhere corroded becomes bitter, and isinjurious to every part of the body which is still uncorrupted. sometimes,when the bitter element is refined away, the black part assumes anacidity which takes the place of the bitterness; at other times the bitternessbeing tinged with blood has a redder colour; and this, when mixedwith black, takes the hue of grass; and again, an auburn colour mingleswith the bitter matter

when new flesh is decomposed by the fire whichsurrounds the internal flame;—to all which symptoms some physicianperhaps, or rather some philosopher, who had the power of seeing inmany dissimilar things one nature deserving of a name, has assigned thecommon name of bile. but the other kinds of bile are variously distinguishedby their colours. as for serum, that sort which is the watery partof blood is innocent, but that which is a secretion of black andacid bile is malignant when mingled by the power of heat with any saltsubstance, and is then called acid phlegm. again, the substance which isformed by the liquefaction

of new and tender flesh when air is present,if inflated and encased in liquid so as to form bubbles, which separatelyare invisible owing to their small size, but when collected are ofa bulk which is visible, and have a white colour arising out of thegeneration of foam—all this decomposition of tender flesh when intermingledwith air is termed by us white phlegm. and the whey or sediment ofnewly-formed phlegm is sweat and tears, and includes the various dailydischarges by which the body is purified. now all these become causes ofdisease when the blood is not replenished in a natural manner by foodand drink but gains bulk

from opposite sources in violation of thelaws of nature. when the several parts of the flesh are separated bydisease, if the foundation remains, the power of the disorder is onlyhalf as great, and there is still a prospect of an easy recovery; butwhen that which binds the flesh to the bones is diseased, and no longerbeing separated from the muscles and sinews, ceases to give nourishmentto the bone and to unite flesh and bone, and from being oily and smoothand glutinous becomes rough and salt and dry, owing to bad regimen,then all the substance thus corrupted crumbles away under the fleshand the sinews, and

separates from the bone, and the fleshy partsfall away from their foundation and leave the sinews bare and fullof brine, and the flesh again gets into the circulation of theblood and makes the previously-mentioned disorders still greater.and if these bodily affections be severe, still worse are theprior disorders; as when the bone itself, by reason of the density of theflesh, does not obtain sufficient air, but becomes mouldy and hotand gangrened and receives no nutriment, and the natural process is inverted,and the bone crumbling passes into the food, and the food into theflesh, and the flesh again

falling into the blood makes all maladiesthat may occur more virulent than those already mentioned. but the worstcase of all is when the marrow is diseased, either from excess ordefect; and this is the cause of the very greatest and most fatal disorders,in which the whole course of the body is reversed. there is a third class of diseases which maybe conceived of as arising in three ways; for they are produced sometimesby wind, and sometimes by phlegm, and sometimes by bile. when the lung,which is the dispenser of the air to the body, is obstructed by rheumsand its passages are not

free, some of them not acting, while throughothers too much air enters, then the parts which are unrefreshed by aircorrode, while in other parts the excess of air forcing its way throughthe veins distorts them and decomposing the body is enclosed in themidst of it and occupies the midriff; thus numberless painful diseasesare produced, accompanied by copious sweats. and oftentimes when the fleshis dissolved in the body, wind, generated within and unable to escape,is the source of quite as much pain as the air coming in from without;but the greatest pain is felt when the wind gets about the sinews andthe veins of the shoulders,

and swells them up, and so twists back thegreat tendons and the sinews which are connected with them. these disordersare called tetanus and opisthotonus, by reason of the tension whichaccompanies them. the cure of them is difficult; relief is in mostcases given by fever supervening. the white phlegm, though dangerouswhen detained within by reason of the air-bubbles, yet if it can communicatewith the outside air, is less severe, and only discolours thebody, generating leprous eruptions and similar diseases. when it ismingled with black bile and dispersed about the courses of the head, whichare the divinest part

of us, the attack if coming on in sleep, isnot so severe; but when assailing those who are awake it is hard tobe got rid of, and being an affection of a sacred part, is most justlycalled sacred. an acid and salt phlegm, again, is the source of all thosediseases which take the form of catarrh, but they have many namesbecause the places into which they flow are manifold. inflammations of the body come from burningsand inflamings, and all of them originate in bile. when bile finds ameans of discharge, it boils up and sends forth all sorts of tumours; butwhen imprisoned within, it

generates many inflammatory diseases, aboveall when mingled with pure blood; since it then displaces the fibreswhich are scattered about in the blood and are designed to maintain thebalance of rare and dense, in order that the blood may not be so liquefiedby heat as to exude from the pores of the body, nor again becometoo dense and thus find a difficulty in circulating through the veins.the fibres are so constituted as to maintain this balance; andif any one brings them all together when the blood is dead and inprocess of cooling, then the blood which remains becomes fluid, but ifthey are left alone, they soon

congeal by reason of the surrounding cold.the fibres having this power over the blood, bile, which is only staleblood, and which from being flesh is dissolved again into blood, at thefirst influx coming in little by little, hot and liquid, is congealedby the power of the fibres; and so congealing and made to cool,it produces internal cold and shuddering. when it enters with more ofa flood and overcomes the fibres by its heat, and boiling up throwsthem into disorder, if it have power enough to maintain its supremacy, itpenetrates the marrow and burns up what may be termed the cables ofthe soul, and sets her free;

but when there is not so much of it, and thebody though wasted still holds out, the bile is itself mastered, andis either utterly banished, or is thrust through the veins into the loweror upper belly, and is driven out of the body like an exile froma state in which there has been civil war; whence arise diarrhoeas anddysenteries, and all such disorders. when the constitution is disorderedby excess of fire, continuous heat and fever are the result;when excess of air is the cause, then the fever is quotidian; when ofwater, which is a more sluggish element than either fire or air,then the fever is a tertian;

when of earth, which is the most sluggishof the four, and is only purged away in a four-fold period, the resultis a quartan fever, which can with difficulty be shaken off. end of part 7part 8 such is the manner in which diseases of thebody arise; the disorders of the soul, which depend upon the body, originateas follows. we must acknowledge disease of the mind to be a wantof intelligence; and of this there are two kinds; to wit, madnessand ignorance. in whatever state a man experiences either of them, thatstate may be called

disease; and excessive pains and pleasuresare justly to be regarded as the greatest diseases to which the soul isliable. for a man who is in great joy or in great pain, in his unreasonableeagerness to attain the one and to avoid the other, is not ableto see or to hear anything rightly; but he is mad, and is at the timeutterly incapable of any participation in reason. he who has the seedabout the spinal marrow too plentiful and overflowing, like a tree overladenwith fruit, has many throes, and also obtains many pleasuresin his desires and their offspring, and is for the most part of hislife deranged, because his

pleasures and pains are so very great; hissoul is rendered foolish and disordered by his body; yet he is regardednot as one diseased, but as one who is voluntarily bad, which is a mistake.the truth is that the intemperance of love is a disease of thesoul due chiefly to the moisture and fluidity which is produced inone of the elements by the loose consistency of the bones. and in general,all that which is termed the incontinence of pleasure and is deemeda reproach under the idea that the wicked voluntarily do wrongis not justly a matter for reproach. for no man is voluntarily bad; butthe bad become bad by

reason of an ill disposition of the body andbad education, things which are hateful to every man and happen to himagainst his will. and in the case of pain too in like manner the soulsuffers much evil from the body. for where the acid and briny phlegmand other bitter and bilious humours wander about in the body, and findno exit or escape, but are pent up within and mingle their own vapourswith the motions of the soul, and are blended with them, they produceall sorts of diseases, more or fewer, and in every degree of intensity;and being carried to the three places of the soul, whichever theymay severally assail, they

create infinite varieties of ill-temper andmelancholy, of rashness and cowardice, and also of forgetfulness and stupidity.further, when to this evil constitution of body evil formsof government are added and evil discourses are uttered in private aswell as in public, and no sort of instruction is given in youth to cure theseevils, then all of us who are bad become bad from two causes whichare entirely beyond our control. in such cases the planters are toblame rather than the plants, the educators rather than the educated. buthowever that may be, we should endeavour as far as we can by education,and studies, and

learning, to avoid vice and attain virtue;this, however, is part of another subject. there is a corresponding enquiry concerningthe mode of treatment by which the mind and the body are to be preserved,about which it is meet and right that i should say a word in turn;for it is more our duty to speak of the good than of the evil. everythingthat is good is fair, and the fair is not without proportion, and theanimal which is to be fair must have due proportion. now we perceivelesser symmetries or proportions and reason about them, but ofthe highest and greatest

we take no heed; for there is no proportionor disproportion more productive of health and disease, and virtueand vice, than that between soul and body. this however we do not perceive,nor do we reflect that when a weak or small frame is the vehicleof a great and mighty soul, or conversely, when a little soul is encasedin a large body, then the whole animal is not fair, for it lacksthe most important of all symmetries; but the due proportion of mindand body is the fairest and loveliest of all sights to him who has theseeing eye. just as a body which has a leg too long, or which is unsymmetricalin some other

respect, is an unpleasant sight, and also,when doing its share of work, is much distressed and makes convulsive efforts,and often stumbles through awkwardness, and is the cause of infiniteevil to its own self—in like manner we should conceive ofthe double nature which we call the living being; and when in this compoundthere is an impassioned soul more powerful than the body, that soul,i say, convulses and fills with disorders the whole inner nature of man;and when eager in the pursuit of some sort of learning or study,causes wasting; or again, when teaching or disputing in private or inpublic, and strifes and

controversies arise, inflames and dissolvesthe composite frame of man and introduces rheums; and the natureof this phenomenon is not understood by most professors of medicine,who ascribe it to the opposite of the real cause. and once more,when a body large and too strong for the soul is united to a small andweak intelligence, then inasmuch as there are two desires naturalto man,—one of food for the sake of the body, and one of wisdom for thesake of the diviner part of us—then, i say, the motions of the stronger,getting the better and increasing their own power, but making thesoul dull, and stupid, and

forgetful, engender ignorance, which is thegreatest of diseases. there is one protection against both kinds of disproportion:—thatwe should not move the body without the soul or thesoul without the body, and thus they will be on their guard against eachother, and be healthy and well balanced. and therefore the mathematicianor any one else whose thoughts are much absorbed in some intellectualpursuit, must allow his body also to have due exercise, and practisegymnastic; and he who is careful to fashion the body, should inturn impart to the soul its proper motions, and should cultivate musicand all philosophy, if he

would deserve to be called truly fair andtruly good. and the separate parts should be treated in the same manner,in imitation of the pattern of the universe; for as the body is heatedand also cooled within by the elements which enter into it, and is againdried up and moistened by external things, and experiences these andthe like affections from both kinds of motions, the result is that the bodyif given up to motion when in a state of quiescence is overmastered andperishes; but if any one, in imitation of that which we call the foster-motherand nurse of the universe, will not allow the body ever tobe inactive, but is always

producing motions and agitations through itswhole extent, which form the natural defence against other motionsboth internal and external, and by moderate exercise reduces to orderaccording to their affinities the particles and affections which are wanderingabout the body, as we have already said when speaking of the universe,he will not allow enemy placed by the side of enemy to stir up warsand disorders in the body, but he will place friend by the side of friend,so as to create health. now of all motions that is the best whichis produced in a thing by itself, for it is most akin to the motionof thought and of the

universe; but that motion which is causedby others is not so good, and worst of all is that which moves the body,when at rest, in parts only and by some external agency. wherefore ofall modes of purifying and re-uniting the body the best is gymnastic;the next best is a surging motion, as in sailing or any other mode ofconveyance which is not fatiguing; the third sort of motion may beof use in a case of extreme necessity, but in any other will be adoptedby no man of sense: i mean the purgative treatment of physicians; fordiseases unless they are very dangerous should not be irritated bymedicines, since every form of

disease is in a manner akin to the livingbeing, whose complex frame has an appointed term of life. for not thewhole race only, but each individual—barring inevitable accidents—comesinto the world having a fixed span, and the triangles in us are originallyframed with power to last for a certain time, beyond which no mancan prolong his life. and this holds also of the constitution of diseases;if any one regardless of the appointed time tries to subdue themby medicine, he only aggravates and multiplies them. whereforewe ought always to manage them by regimen, as far as a man can sparethe time, and not provoke a

disagreeable enemy by medicines. enough of the composite animal, and of thebody which is a part of him, and of the manner in which a man may trainand be trained by himself so as to live most according to reason: and wemust above and before all provide that the element which is to trainhim shall be the fairest and best adapted to that purpose. a minute discussionof this subject would be a serious task; but if, as before, i amto give only an outline, the subject may not unfitly be summed up as follows. i have often remarked that there are threekinds of soul located within

us, having each of them motions, and i mustnow repeat in the fewest words possible, that one part, if remaininginactive and ceasing from its natural motion, must necessarily becomevery weak, but that which is trained and exercised, very strong. whereforewe should take care that the movements of the different partsof the soul should be in due proportion. and we should consider that god gave the sovereignpart of the human soul to be the divinity of each one, beingthat part which, as we say, dwells at the top of the body, and inasmuchas we are a plant not of an

earthly but of a heavenly growth, raises usfrom earth to our kindred who are in heaven. and in this we say truly;for the divine power suspended the head and root of us from thatplace where the generation of the soul first began, and thus made thewhole body upright. when a man is always occupied with the cravings ofdesire and ambition, and is eagerly striving to satisfy them, all histhoughts must be mortal, and, as far as it is possible altogether to becomesuch, he must be mortal every whit, because he has cherished his mortalpart. but he who has been earnest in the love of knowledge andof true wisdom, and has

exercised his intellect more than any otherpart of him, must have thoughts immortal and divine, if he attaintruth, and in so far as human nature is capable of sharing in immortality,he must altogether be immortal; and since he is ever cherishingthe divine power, and has the divinity within him in perfect order, he willbe perfectly happy. now there is only one way of taking care of things,and this is to give to each the food and motion which are naturalto it. and the motions which are naturally akin to the divine principlewithin us are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe. these eachman should follow, and

correct the courses of the head which werecorrupted at our birth, and by learning the harmonies and revolutionsof the universe, should assimilate the thinking being to the thought,renewing his original nature, and having assimilated them shouldattain to that perfect life which the gods have set before mankind, bothfor the present and the future. thus our original design of discoursing aboutthe universe down to the creation of man is nearly completed. a briefmention may be made of the generation of other animals, so far as thesubject admits of brevity;

in this manner our argument will best attaina due proportion. on the subject of animals, then, the following remarksmay be offered. of the men who came into the world, those who werecowards or led unrighteous lives may with reason be supposed to havechanged into the nature of women in the second generation. and this wasthe reason why at that time the gods created in us the desire of sexualintercourse, contriving in man one animated substance, and in womananother, which they formed respectively in the following manner. theoutlet for drink by which liquids pass through the lung under the kidneysand into the bladder,

which receives and then by the pressure ofthe air emits them, was so fashioned by them as to penetrate also intothe body of the marrow, which passes from the head along the neckand through the back, and which in the preceding discourse we have namedthe seed. and the seed having life, and becoming endowed with respiration,produces in that part in which it respires a lively desireof emission, and thus creates in us the love of procreation. wherefore alsoin men the organ of generation becoming rebellious and masterful,like an animal disobedient to reason, and maddened with the sting oflust, seeks to gain absolute

sway; and the same is the case with the so-calledwomb or matrix of women; the animal within them is desirousof procreating children, and when remaining unfruitful long beyond itsproper time, gets discontented and angry, and wandering in every directionthrough the body, closes up the passages of the breath, and, by obstructingrespiration, drives them to extremity, causing all varieties ofdisease, until at length the desire and love of the man and the woman,bringing them together and as it were plucking the fruit from the tree,sow in the womb, as in a field, animals unseen by reason of their smallnessand without form;

these again are separated and matured within;they are then finally brought out into the light, and thus the generationof animals is completed. thus were created women and the female sexin general. but the race of birds was created out of innocent light-mindedmen, who, although their minds were directed toward heaven, imagined,in their simplicity, that the clearest demonstration of the things abovewas to be obtained by sight; these were remodelled and transformedinto birds, and they grew feathers instead of hair. the race of wildpedestrian animals, again,

came from those who had no philosophy in anyof their thoughts, and never considered at all about the nature ofthe heavens, because they had ceased to use the courses of the head,but followed the guidance of those parts of the soul which are in the breast.in consequence of these habits of theirs they had their front-legsand their heads resting upon the earth to which they were drawn by naturalaffinity; and the crowns of their heads were elongated and of all sortsof shapes, into which the courses of the soul were crushed by reasonof disuse. and this was the reason why they were created quadrupeds andpolypods: god gave the more

senseless of them the more support that theymight be more attracted to the earth. and the most foolish of them, whotrail their bodies entirely upon the ground and have no longer any needof feet, he made without feet to crawl upon the earth. the fourth classwere the inhabitants of the water: these were made out of the mostentirely senseless and ignorant of all, whom the transformers didnot think any longer worthy of pure respiration, because they possesseda soul which was made impure by all sorts of transgression; and insteadof the subtle and pure medium of air, they gave them the deep and muddysea to be their element of

respiration; and hence arose the race of fishesand oysters, and other aquatic animals, which have received the mostremote habitations as a punishment of their outlandish ignorance.these are the laws by which animals pass into one another, now, as ever,changing as they lose or gain wisdom and folly. we may now say that our discourse about thenature of the universe has an end. the world has received animals, mortaland immortal, and is fulfilled with them, and has become a visibleanimal containing the visible—the sensible god who is the imageof the intellectual, the

greatest, best, fairest, most perfect—theone only-begotten heaven. end of part 8end of timaeus by plato translated by benjamin jowett