Naivral-Histoneal Collections. 915 



ing on account of its being the oldest that remains to us of all that the Greek 

 philosophers wrote on the natural sciences. 



The dialogue commences with a recital which Critias supposes to have been 

 made to Solon by an old priest of Sais, a city of Lower Egypt, which was consi- 

 dered in Greece as the country of Cecrops. This priest then relates that Sais 

 was founded 10,000 years previously by a colony wliich had emigrated from At- 

 tica. Since that time, according to the relation, numerous deluges had taken 

 place, and had destroyed all human monuments ; but in the midst of these dis- 

 asters, Egypt had been spared and still retained her annals. It is unnecessary to 

 observe the absurdity which there is in supposing that a country scarcely raised 

 above the level of the sea, could have been preserved during an inundation which 

 covered higher lands. What is to be seen in it, is merely a confused, but uni- 

 versal, remembrance of great geological revolutions. We find others in the his- 

 tory of the Atlantis overwhelmed by the waters, and we should doubtless find 

 many others, had not Plato disfigured the original tradition by adding to it orna- 

 ments purely fictitious. It is certain at least, that when he speaks of the wars of 

 the inhabitants of that island, their constitution, &c. he indulges in his propen- 

 sity to fiction, and does not express his real belief. 



After Critias has finished his recital, Timasus speaks, and goes back to a much 

 more remote .cosmogony. The world, he says, was arranged by the Divinity : 

 it proceeded from the Son, who formed it, and from the Father, who fiimished its 

 model. When the intellect which existed from all eternity penetrated matter, 

 which itself had no commencement, there resulted from this mixture the mind 

 of the universe. The world has therefore in itself the principle of motion. It 

 has besides all the conditions of exislence of organized beings, and is a true 

 animal. 



Timaeus therefore admits matter as pre-existent to creation, and this opinion 

 was generally that of all the ancient philosophers, even of those who believed in a 

 divinity distinct from the universe. 



The substance of all bodies, adds the Pythagorean, is comjwsed of four ele- 

 ments, air, earth, fire, and water. Each of these elements owes the properties 

 which it possesses to the figure of its molecules, which are pyramidal in fire, cu- 

 bical in earth, octahedral in water, and icosihedral in air. Each of these solids 

 is resolved into tetrahedrons, so that definitively it is of triangular pyramids that 

 the universe is composed. 



It will be seen how nearly these ideas approach to those which at the present 

 day form the basis of crystallography. In fact, there is no fundamental principle 

 of science that has not in this manner been guessed at by the ancients ; but these 

 principles have only been subservient to tlie advancement of science when they 

 have been deduced from experiment and observation. Whenever they have been 

 established a priori, they have been found completely sterile. 



Tima5us at length comes to the psychological and physiological part of his doc- 

 trine, for he makes no distinction between these two orders of phenomena, which 

 to us seem so different. It must be recollected here, that before the time of Ari- 

 stotle the greatest confusion prevailed in science. It was that wonderful man 

 who first imagined a classification of human acquirements, and gave an example 

 of it in his works. 



God created the soul of the world by introducing the self-existent ideas into 

 the material substance. From this mixture were formed the souls of organized 

 beings, which are, with relation to the universal soul, as the drops adhering to 

 the sides of a vessel are to the liquid contained in it. The human souls were 

 distributed in the different planets. Those which had the earth as their resi- 

 dence were there in a kind of state of probation. The infernal gods were direct- 

 ed to clothe them with bodies, of which they had no need before. 



Man received three souls : the reasonable soul, the sensitive soul, and the ve- 

 getative soul. The reasonable soul resides in the highest part of the body, in 

 order to be nearer the sky, from which it derived its origin. The head, which is 

 its place of residence, is rounded after the form of the world. The sensitive or 



