2. Plato
Gregory, 'in accordance with the image, then, the human being came to be, that is, the universal nature, the godlike thing [ὁἄνθρωπος, ἡκαθόλου φύσις, τὸθεοείκελον χρῆμα]' (De hom. 22.4). It is not impossible that he is playing with these words, and thus intimating his own indebtedness to, and standing within, the same tradition as had, according to Tzamalikos, Origen.
2. Plato According to Plato, Socrates was dissatisfied with Anaxagoras' book because it did not seem to him to provide what is most needed in an account of cosmology—that is, how and why Intellect 'arranges everything and establishes each thing as it is best [βέλτιστα] for it to be' (Phaed. 97c4). Apart from a single passage of Diogenes of Apollonia (late fifth century ), consideration of the goodness of the intellect and its cosmogenic activity seems not to have been treated by the Presocratics.³⁰
While the good was, of course, central to Socrates' concerns, and although he gave a story (μῦθος) at the end of the Phaedo which gestures towards such an account
(Phaed. 107c1–115a8), his wish, even in his last hours, to 'be a pupil of one who would teach me of such a cause' (Phaed. 99c7–8) is only fulfilled, as Sedley points out, when Plato has him listen to Timaeus, presumably a Pythagorean, so that Plato thereby 'legitimates his own lifetime project, portraying his later move into physics not as a betrayal of Socrates but as the very development that Socrates himself would above all else have welcomed'.³¹ Without a doubt, Plato's Timaeus was the most important text in the ancient world, and beyond, regarding the universe, the structure of the cosmos, and the human being within it, the nature of the soul, and providence. There are, of course, many difficult points of interpretation regarding this work, some of which have been debated from the earliest times onwards, such as the status of the 'Craftsman' or 'Demiurge' (a 'creator god' or a mythical figure personifying divine reason within creation working towards good ends?) and the account of time (did the world come to be in time or time with the creation of the world?), or, in more recent times, the setting of Timaeus in relation to the Republic, the relation between the speeches in the Timaeus, the parts of Timaeus' own speech, and the way in which meaning evolves as it unfolds in dialogue.³² I suggested in the previous chapter, and will argue more in what is to come, that the three parts of Timaeus' speech are paralleled by the divisions within ³⁰ Cf. Diogenes of Apollonia B3 (= Simplicius, In Phys. 1.4; Diels, 152.11–16): 'for without intelligence [ἄνευ νοήσιος], he says, it would not be possible for it to be distributed in such a way as to possess the measures of all things, of winter and summer, of night and day, of rains and winds and fine weather; if one wishes to think intelligently [ἐννοεῖσθαι] about them, one would find that they are arranged in the finest way [κάλλιστα] that could be achieved'. For Diogenes, see Sedley, Creationism, 75–8.
³¹ Sedley, Creationism, 92.
³² For many of the former points, Francis MacDonald Cornford, Plato's Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997 [1937]) remains essential. For the latter questions, see
Gregory's work On the Human Image. As such, it is necessary to give a sketch of the train of thought in each part of Timaeus' speech, or at least key aspects of them, in order to see how they relate and the overall picture that is given thereby.
The subject proposed for Timaeus is 'to speak beginning from the genesis of the world and end with the nature of human beings' (27a5–6). Following his introductory prelude (27d5–29d3), there are three main parts to Timaeus' speech. The first (29d7–47e2) sets out 'the things that have been crafted by Intellect' (47e4: τὰ διὰνοῦδεδημιουργημένα). Although intimations are already given in this first part that he is anticipating what will come later (cf. 34b10, 44c4–5), midway through his speech Timaeus announces he will make a new beginning, so as to give an account of 'Necessity' (ἀνάγκη) and the 'Straying Cause' (πλανωμένη αἰτία), that over which Intellect 'prevailed', 'persuading it to direct most of the things that come to be towards what is best' (48a2–3); this is the subject of the second part of his speech (47e3–69a5). The third part (69a6–92c9) is again signalled likewise: he announces that as all the materials are now ready for construction, 'from them we are to weave together the remainder of our account; so let us briefly return to our starting point and quickly proceed to the same place from which we arrived at our present position and let us try to put a final head on our story, one that fits with our previous discussion' (69a7–b2). The bulk of what follows is a detailed psychophysical account of the parts of the body, their functions and purposes, the diseases of body and soul, and the need for proper care of each, ending with an account of the differentiation into male and female (90e–92d6) and the appearance of the lower animals. Timaeus concludes his speech in Critias with a prayer
'to the god [i.e. the world] who previously of old came to be in reality and just now comes to be in words'.³³ Timaeus' speech is not, then, simply an account of the formation of the cosmos and the human being within it, but a verbal representation or enactment of its order and harmony. Moreover, by showing 'the reasons and forethought [αἰτίας καὶπρονοίας] of the gods in causing them to be' (44c7), it enables others, through the right nurture of instruction, to calm the irrational movements of their souls and so become 'perfectly whole and healthy' (44b8–c1).
In the prelude, Timaeus sets out the general metaphysical structure for his account and indicates the status of the account itself. He begins by making a firm distinction between 'that which is grasped by intellection through a rational
Hans-Georg Gadamer, 'Idea and Reality in Plato's Timaeus', in idem, Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight
Hermeneutical Studies on Plato, trans. P. Christopher Smith (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1980), 156–93, and Dominic J. O'Meara, Cosmology and Politics in Plato's Later Works (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2017), 1–84. In addition, I have found the following particularly helpful:
Donald J. Zeyl's introduction to his translation of the Timaeus (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000), xiii– lxxxix (I have largely followed Zeyl's translation, consulting others, and modifying as necessary);
T. K. Johansen, Plato's Natural Philosophy: A Study of the Timaeus-Critias (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004); and David Sedley, Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 2007), 93–132.
³³ Plato, Crit. 106a3–4: τῷδὲπρὶν μὲν πάλαι ποτ᾽ἔργῳ, νῦν δὲλόγοις ἄρτι θεῷγεγονότι.
account [νοήσει μετὰλόγου], always unchangeably being', and 'that which is conceived of by opinion through unreasoning sense-perception, coming to be and passing away but which never really is' (28a1–3). As the heaven or the cosmos can be seen and touched, it has a body, and thus has come to be, and necessarily has done so because of some cause (28a7–c2). In bringing this about, Timaeus argues, 'the maker and father of this universe' must have looked to the eternal for his model, for indeed this world 'is the most beautiful of the things that have come to be and he is the best of causes'.³⁴ As such, what came to be must have been crafted 'with reference to that which is graspable by reason (λόγῳ) and wisdom', and it is thus 'a likeness [εἰκόνα] of something' (29a6–b2). These metaphysical principles, finally, have a direct impact on how Timaeus understands his own speech: with regard to this likeness and its model (παράδειγμα), he argues that as 'the accounts [τοὺς λόγους] we give of things have the same character as the subjects they set forth', so accounts of that which is 'stable and fixed and transparent to understanding are themselves stable and unshifting', whereas an account of that which is but a 'likeness' (εἰκών) will itself only be a 'likely story'
(εἰκὸς μῦθος, 29b2–c1) and also have a tendency to be 'casual and random', for we too 'greatly partake of the casual and random' (34c2–4).
Turning to the first part of his speech, there are a number of points to note.
Most important is the affirmation that the framer of the universe, being good and therefore without jealousy, 'wanted everything to become as much like himself as possible', and that this is 'the most preeminent reason [ἀρχὴν κυριωτάτην] for the origin of the world's genesis' (29e1–30a2). This being his desire, 'the god took over all that was visible—not at rest but in discordant and unordered motion—and brought it from a state of disorder to one of order, because he believed that order was in every way better than disorder' (30a2–6). Reasoning that among visible things, those that have intellect are better than those that do not and that intellect can only be present in those things that have souls, when the god framed the universe he thus placed intellect within the soul and soul within the body—at least,
'according to the likely story, this is how we must say that this world came to be by the god's providence [πρόνοιαν], as a truly living thing, endowed with soul and intellect' (30a6–c1). The result is that this world 'resembles more closely than anything else that Living Thing of which all other living things are parts, both individually and by kinds. For that Living Thing comprehends within itself all intelligible living things, just as our world is made up of us and all the other visible creatures' (30c5–d1).
After having established that the world must be singular and unique, as is its model (31a1–b2), Timaeus turns to the four elements (fire, earth, water, and air) of the cosmic body, made spherical in shape and rotating upon its axis. Within ³⁴ Plato, Tim. 28c3–29a6: ὁμὲν γὰρ κάλλιστος τῶν γεγονότων, ὁδ᾽ἄριστος τῶν αἰτίων.
that body, the god 'set a soul in its center, which he extended throughout the whole body and with which he then covered the body outside' so that 'this world which he begat for himself is a blessed god' (34b3–9). Catching himself, however,
Timaeus emphasizes that although he has treated the body of the world before its soul, because of the 'random and casual' character of his speech, 'priority and seniority' is in fact given by the god to the soul, for it is preeminent and to rule the body (34b10–35a1). In Plato's telling, the soul of the world is made by combining
'the Same'—that is, that which is indivisible and always changeless—with 'the Different'—that is, that which comes to be in the corporeal realm and is divisible—by means of a third, an 'intermediary form of being derived from the other two', 'conforming by force [βίᾳ] the different, which was hard to mix, into conformity with the Same' (35a1–9). After describing the creation of time, as 'a moving image of eternity' (37c6–38b5), Plato notes that although the world, up to the birth of time, had been made in all other respects like its model, it was still
'unlike' in that 'it did not yet contain all the living things that it were to have come to be within it', that is, the four kinds of living things: the heavenly race of gods, those that have wings and fly, those that live in the water, and those that have feet and live on land (39e3–40a2). He himself made the heavenly gods—sun, moon, stars, and planets—who regulate time, and also earth as our 'nurturer' and the guardian of day and night (40a2–d5); the coming to be of other gods, he notes briefly, has been described by their descendants (40d6–41a3).
With this accomplished, 'the begetter of the universe' directed all these gods regarding their work in forming mortal beings, 'without whom the heaven will be incomplete [ἀτελὴς]' (41a5–b8). He announces that he will 'begin by sowing that seed' and then specifies that 'the rest of the task is yours: weave what is mortal to what is immortal, fashion and beget living things. Give them food, cause them to grow, and when they perish, receive them back again' (41c8–d3). When he finished his speech to his children, the father of the universe, according to Timaeus, returned to the mixing bowl, mixing together the same ingredients, although no longer ones that are 'invariably and constantly pure, but of a second and third grade of purity'; after dividing the mixture into the same number of souls as there are stars in the heavens and assigning each one to a star, he
'mounted each soul in a carriage, as it were, and showed it the nature of the universe' (41d4–e1). He then 'described to them the laws that had been ordained', that is, 'that they would all be assigned one and the same initial birth [γένεσις]', so that all would be treated by him equally, and said that 'he would then sow each of the souls into that instrument of time suitable to it, where they were to acquire the nature of being the most god-fearing of living things', adding that 'since human beings have a two-fold nature' (διπλῆς δὲοὔσης τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης φύσεως), it should be the superior kind that would from then on be called 'man' (ἀνήρ, 41e1–42a3).
But, importantly, before describing the work of the gods in constructing the mortal frames for these souls, Timaeus immediately continues by spelling out how
these 'laws' are, as it were, existentially experienced. 'Once the souls were of necessity implanted in bodies', as these bodies have things coming in and going out, 'the first innate capacity they would of necessity come to have would be senseperception, which arises out of forceful disturbances', and secondly 'love [ἔρως], mingled with pleasure and pain', with fear [φόβος] and spiritedness [θυμός], together with whatever goes with having these emotions and their natural opposites (42a3–b1). 'If they could master them, their lives would be just, whereas if they were mastered, they would be unjust. And if a person lived a good life throughout the due course of time, he would at the end return to his dwelling place in his companion star.' Failing this, 'he would be born a second time, now as a woman', and if even then he could not refrain from wickedness, he would be changed again, into some wild animal (42b1–c4). There would be, moreover, 'no rest from these toilsome transformations until, by dragging into conformity with the revolution of the same and uniform within him that massive accretion of fire and water and air and earth, controlling that turbulent irrational mass by means of reason, he would return to the form of his first and best condition' (42c4–d2).
Only after having given these ordained laws setting out the growth that is required of mortal embodied beings does Timaeus turn to describing how the gods wove what is mortal to the immortal, fastening together the elements drawn from the world with rivets rather than indissoluble bonds. And the result of their work is what we now see: human beings who begin their existence by moving 'in a disorderly, random, and irrational manner' (43b1–2), because 'at this stage souls do not have a ruling orbit taking the lead' (44a4–5): 'all these disturbances are no doubt the reason why even today and not only at the beginning, whenever a soul is bound with a mortal body, it at first lacks intelligence' (ἄνους ψυχὴγίγνεται τὸ πρῶτον 44a7–b1). 'But', Timaeus continues, 'as the stream that brings growth and nourishment diminishes and the soul's orbits regain their composure, resume their proper courses, and establish themselves more and more with the passage of time, their revolutions are set straight, to conform to the configuration each of the circles takes in its natural course; they then correctly identify what is the same and what is different, and render intelligent the person who possesses them' (44b1–7).
In this way, finally, 'if such a person also gets proper nurture to supplement his education, he'll turn out perfectly whole and healthy' (44b8–c1).
Yet, once again, Timaeus then catches himself: 'But this doesn't happen till later. Our present subject, on the other hand, needs a more detailed treatment. We must move on to treat the prior questions' (44c4–5)—that is the construction, form, and functioning of the various bodily parts, especially eyes and sight, and also music, which by its rhythm assists us, for most of us 'have lost all sense of measure and are lacking in grace'; several pages are devoted to this (43d3–47e2), full of extensive details that need not detain us here.
In the prelude and the first part of his speech, then, Timaeus has given us a 'likely story' expounding a cosmology that accounts for the world and human
beings in terms of what is 'best' or 'most beautiful', tracing this back to the father of the universe and the intelligible and eternal model upon which this world is fashioned: this, or rather he, is 'the best of causes' and the world is indeed 'the most beautiful of the things that have come to be' (29a5–6), and 'the preeminent reason' for the becoming of the world is that it should be as like the god as possible
(29e2–30a2). However, as a 'likely story' the speech is itself rather 'casual and random', with Timaeus apparently running ahead of himself and catching himself: the formation of the body is described before that of the soul, although the priority is in fact the other way round; the growth expected of embodied souls is detailed before their embodiment is treated; and, most importantly, while the world is indeed most beautiful, human beings, he points out, do not come into existence in that way. Although as souls they are shown the nature of the universe and have
'one and the same initial birth', as embodied beings the first impression that strikes them is not 'the movement of the same within them' but the forceful disturbances that arise from outside by means of the senses, and so they come into being in a rather disordered manner, with limbs flailing about rather than moving in an orderly manner—they are at first souls lacking intelligence (44a8). But this means that the world, while being indeed the most beautiful of things that have come to be, is also a proving ground, as it were, where souls implanted in bodies have the task of mastering the irrational movements stimulated by external impressions, and for whom pleasure is mixed with pain so as to provide a stimulus for growth in self-mastery; indeed, it is this 'instrument of time' into which the souls are sown that provides the guidance for their growth, so that, conforming their irrational movements to 'the revolution of the Same and uniform within him', they will thereby return (though in what sense, as the account of creation is not yet complete?) to the 'first and best condition' and 'acquire the nature of being the most god-fearing of living things'.³⁵ By arranging things this way, moreover, directing the gods to give mortal beings 'the finest, the best possible guidance they could give', the father and maker of the universe provides the means for their growth, yet 'without being responsible for any evil that these creatures might bring upon themselves' (42e1–4).
Having concluded this part of his speech by referring to our present condition, in which we have 'lost all sense of measure and are lacking in grace' (47d7–e2),
Timaeus then announces:
³⁵ As Cornford (Plato's Cosmology, 6) notes: 'The Republic had dwelt on the structural analogy between the state and the individual soul. Now Plato intends to base his conception of human life, both for the individual and society, on the inexpugnable foundation of the order of the universe. The parallel of macrocosm and microcosm runs through the whole discourse. True morality is not a product of human evolution, still less the arbitrary enactment of human wills. It is an order and harmony of the soul; and the soul itself is a counterpart, in miniature, of the soul of the world, which has an everlasting order and harmony of its own, instituted by reason. This order was revealed to every soul before its birth (41e); and it is revealed now in the visible architecture of the heavens.'
Now in all but a brief part of the discourse I have just completed I have presented what has been crafted by Intellect. But I need to match this account by providing a comparable one concerning the things that have come about by Necessity
[ἀνάγκη]. For this ordered world is of mixed birth: it is the offspring of a union of Necessity and Intellect. Intellect prevailed over Necessity by persuading it to direct most of the things that come to be towards what is best, and the result of this subjugation of Necessity to wise persuasion was the initial formation of this universe. So, if one is to speak of how it really came to be in this way [εἴτις οὖν ᾗ γέγονεν κατὰταῦτα ὄντως ἐρεῖ], one would also have to introduce the character of the Straying Cause [τὸτῆς πλανωμένης εἶδος αἰτίας]—how it is its nature to set things adrift. I shall have to retrace my steps, then, and, armed with a second starting point that also applies to these same things, I must go back once again to the beginning and start my present inquiry from there, just as I did with my earlier one.
(47e3–48b3) Although narrated first in his 'likely story', the way in which Timaeus has already included elements of the countervailing forces operative in the world and the genesis of human beings, and also the passing mentions of 'auxiliary' or 'contributory' causes (συναίτιαι 46c7, d1; συμμεταίτια 46e6), disrupting, though surely not purposelessly, the flow of his speech, indicates that 'what was crafted by Intellect' is not separate, temporally or spatially, from the world that actually is, as he says here, 'of mixed birth'. It is, however, only in this second part of his speech that Timaeus sets about to examine systematically, from the same starting point, what these are—that is, 'Necessity' or 'Constraint' and 'the Straying Cause'.
What is meant by this 'Necessity' and 'Straying Cause' has been a matter of considerable debate.³⁶ On one level it seems most likely, as Sedley argues, that they consist in matter and its properties: 'when intelligence operates in the world it has to rely on the intrinsic properties of matter, but matter, having no inherent tendency towards good ends, acts in a purposeless way unless it is directed, or in Timaeus' preferred idiom "persuaded", by intelligence'.³⁷ But this does not simply indicate, he further argues, the 'intransigence of matter, its resistance to intelligent persuasion, the cause of evil in the world', for after all, according to the 'likely story', the creator had 'carte blanche' in organizing the stuff from which he would build the cosmos.³⁸ The key point is that, as Johansen puts it, this cause is
'wandering' in that in itself 'it is not teleological'; yet, while its operation is not of itself directed towards the best outcome, nevertheless when 'persuaded' by Intellect it becomes a 'contributory cause'.³⁹
³⁶ Cf. Cornford, Plato's Cosmology, 162–77; Johansen, Plato's Natural Philosophy, 92–116; Sedley,
Creationism, 113–27.
³⁷ Sedley, Creationism, 114–15.
³⁸ Sedley, Creationism, 115.
³⁹ Johansen, Plato's Natural Philosophy, 93.
Besides the question of matter and its own properties, there is also a further dimension of necessity at play in the growth of the human being, already alluded to by Timaeus in 41d4–42d2. Whether the 'necessity' by which souls are implanted into bodies (42a4) or the 'necessity' by which they come first to experience violent impressions from without (42a5) is related to the 'Necessity' in 47e3–48b3 or not,⁴⁰ the point that embodied souls are to undergo a process of growth under 'the finest, the best possible guidance' (42e2–3) is a given, a 'foreordained law' laid down by the maker of the universe, even before their embodiment, or at least before the narration of the construction of their bodies
(41e2–3). While the maker of the universe can use force (βίᾳ, 35a9) in constructing souls, their growth cannot be forced but requires guidance and especially time:
'sown into the instrument of time' (41e5), souls are able to conform their movements with the revolution of the Same within each, and so return 'to their original condition of excellence' (42d2).
It is in this part of the speech that Timaeus introduces the third factor in his account: in the first part he had distinguished two kinds (δύο εἴδη), the intelligible changeless model and the visible imitation of that model that comes to be, but now he needs to distinguish 'a third, one of a different sort' (τρίτον ἄλλο γένος), and this is 'a receptacle of all genesis, its wetnurse, as it were' (πάσης εἶναι γενέσεως ὑποδοχὴν αὐτὴν οἷον τιθήνην, 48e2–49a6). Plato's account of this receptacle is perhaps the most obscure part of the Timaeus, it being debated whether he is speaking of 'space' or 'stuff '. Zeyl suggests that the way to resolve these two interpretations is to think rather of 'room', in the sense of 'room to move about in': while it is necessarily the case that movement requires room in which to move, this is, for Plato, both the stuff and the room in which the stuff moves, as when a liquid in a container is agitated, forming currents, 'parts' of the liquid will travel through other 'parts' of it, travelling through the room, so that 'the parts through which the currents travel is the room. But any part of the room may become a traveller as well.'⁴¹ If the connection between movement and time has been explored in the first part of Timaeus' speech, it is the connection between movement and space that is explored here further, opening out into a detailed examination of the mathematical and geometrical properties constituting the elements in the realm of becoming. However, while time is of great importance to Gregory in On the Human
Image, space does not seem to be an important factor for him, at least in that work, and so this aspect of the Timaeus can be left aside here.
The third part of Timaeus' speech (69a6–92c9), as already noted, brings the speech together by returning to the starting point, but now 'weaving together' the materials developed in the first two parts, so as to put a 'head' upon his story
(69b1). The bulk of what follows is a detailed psychophysical account of the ⁴⁰ Cf. Sedley's comment about the very common word ἀνάγκη in Creationism, 114 ftn. 48.
⁴¹ Zeyl, Timaeus, lxiii.
human being, analysing the functions and purposes of the various bodily parts and how they contribute to human well-being, together with an examination of the diseases of body and soul, and the need for the care of each. Accepting that 'the Timaeus is not easy reading', Cornford adds that 'the physiological and medical chapters towards the end would be repellent to many'.⁴² However, the purpose of this extensive psychophysical investigation is indicated towards the end of the speech, when Timaeus reflects that it should suffice for 'the subject of the living thing as a whole and its bodily parts, and how a man should both lead and be led by himself in order to have the best prospects for living a rational life' (89d2–4).
Moreover, we are to make sure that the motions of the 'three distinct types of soul that reside within us' are kept in due proportion (89e3–90a2). It is 'the most sovereign part of our soul [that is] god's gift to us, given to be our guiding spirit', which resides in our heads, raising us up from the earth, 'as plants grown not from the earth but from heaven. For it is from heaven, the place from which our souls were originally born, that the divine part suspends our head, that is, our root, and so keeps our whole body erect' (90a2–b1). Rather than becoming absorbed in the appetites or ambitions, and so become thoroughly mortal, we should devote ourselves to the love of learning and true wisdom, thereby nourishing that part of our soul, and 'redirect the revolutions in our heads that were thrown off course around the time of our birth' by learning the harmonies and revolutions of the universe, bringing our understanding into conformity with what it contemplates
(90b1–d5). And so, Timaeus, concludes, 'when this conformity is complete, we shall have achieved our goal: that most excellent life offered to humankind by the gods, both now and forevermore' (90d5–7).
Although it seems that Timaeus has completed his assignment of tracing the formation of the universe and culminating in the coming to be of humankind, he recalls that there are other things whose coming to be is necessary for this world to be fully like its model (cf. 39e3–40a2)—that is, the appearance of women and the other animals. 'According to the likely account', as Timaeus tells it and as we have already seen, 'males who lived lives of cowardice or injustice were reborn in the second generation as women' (90e6–91a1). This explains why, according to Timaeus, it is only at this time that 'the gods fashioned the desire for sexual union' by constructing the reproductive organs, which in turn 'produced the love of procreation', and which are 'unruly and self-willed', refusing to be subject to reason, but seeking to overpower everything else, until 'finally the woman's desire and the man's love bring them together, and, like plucking the fruit from the tree, they sow the seed into the ploughed field of her womb, living things too small to be visible and still without form' (91a1–d5).⁴³ Birds in turn, are reincarnations of ⁴² Cornford, Plato's Cosmology, 20.
⁴³ As Zeyl, Timaeus, lxxxviii, observes: 'Sexual desire, then, is not a desire of the male or female proper—not even of the appetitive part of his or her soul—but of the reproductive organs.'
simpler souls who have studied the heavens through visible observation rather than mathematical calculation; land animals are those who followed the lower parts of the soul rather than reason; and aquatic animals are derived from those who were 'the most stupid and ignorant of all' (91d6–92c3). Although in this
'likely story' women are derived from the moral failings of males, and the groups of animals from human intellectual failure, it nevertheless remains the case that for the world to be a perfect likeness of its intellectual model, it must contain all these beings. Only now has Timaeus' speech come to an end: 'This world of ours has received and teems with living things, mortal and immortal. A visible living thing containing visible ones, a perceptible god, image of the intelligible Living
Thing, its grandness, goodness, beauty and perfection are unexcelled. Our one heaven, indeed the only one of its kind, has come to be' (92c4–9). Although it had
'previously of old come to be in reality', it is indeed in Timaeus' speech that it 'just now comes to be in words' (Crit. 106a3–4), and so his task, 'to speak beginning from the genesis of the cosmos and end with the nature of human beings'
(27a5–6), is discharged.
While there are many particular points of similarity between the Timaeus and Gregory's treatise, which are noted in the following translation, most striking is the parallel threefold division of each work, together with the numerous foreshadowings, backtracking, and apparent detours, and switching between different modes of speech. Gregory's treatise begins with an ideal description of creation and the human being as the image of God (De hom. 1–15), with a lengthy excursion into the apparent relapse from rational control exhibited in tears, laughter, yawning and dreaming, which provides an occasion for a brief (and deeply embedded in a lengthy discussion about the slackening of rational control in such bodily phenomena) treatment of the genesis of evil (De hom. 12–13). But then, noting that the image he has just described is not in fact what we see when looking at actual human beings, he returns again to his starting point, the scriptural verses of Gen. 1:26–7, discerning this time a distinction between the image and the prototype inscribed in these verses (De hom. 16.1–9). Thus begins a lengthy and complex analysis of the waywardness of human beings, God's providence, the division into male and female, the arising of the passions, and the time needed to reach the fullness (both intensively and extensively) of the human being that will happen together with the end of time at the universal reconstitution and the transformation of humanity from the corruptible and earthy to the impassible and eternal. The economy of creation is thus for Gregory, as it is for Plato, a pedagogy, God 'persuading' human beings by providing them with the occasion, the time, and the means for growth in understanding and virtue. The third part of Gregory's treatise, the final lengthy chapter (De hom. 30), as with the third part of Timaeus' speech, draws extensively upon medical knowledge, describing the various organs and their functions, showing how they contribute to the growth of the human being. This chapter is as hard a read as Cornford found the final