Plato — Ms Timctus. 53 



vatcd above the level of the sea, could have been preserved 

 during an inundation which covered higher countries. All that 

 can be admitted is, that there was a confused tradition of great 

 geological revolutions, a tradition which has been found in all 

 countries. Other traditions are seen in the history of the At- 

 lantis submerged by the waters, and no doubt still more would 

 have been found, had not Plato disfigured the original account, 

 by adding to it ornaments suggested by his own fancy. Assu- 

 redly, when he speaks of the wars of the inhabitants of that 

 island, their constitution. Sec, he merely yields himself up to his 

 imagination, and does not express his actual belief. 



After Critias finished his recital, Timaeus speaks, and enters 

 on a still higher cosmogony. The world, he says, was arranged 

 by the Divinity. It proceeds at once from the Son, who formed 

 it, and the Father, Avho furnished the model of it. When in- 

 telligence, which existed from all eternity, penetrated matter, 

 which itself had no beginning, there resulted from the mixture 

 the soul of the universe. The world has thus in itself its prin- 

 ciple of motion. It has besides all the conditions of existence 

 of organized beings. It is a true animal. 



Timaeus, therefore, admits matter as pre-existent to creation, 

 and this opinion was in general that of all the ancient philoso- 

 phers, even of those who did not believe in a distinct divinity of 

 the universe. 



The substance of all bodies, adds the Pythagorean, is com- 

 posed of four elements, air, earth, fire and water. Each of these 

 elements owes the properties which it possesses to the form of 

 its molecules, which are pyramidal in fire, cubical in earth, 

 octahedral in water, icosihedral in air. Each of these solids re- 

 solves itself into tetrahedrons, so that the universe is definitively 

 composed of triangular pyramids. 



These ideas, it will be seen, bear a great resemblance to those 

 which at the present day furnish the basis of crystallography ; 

 nor is there a fundamental principle of science that has not thus 

 been guessed by the ancients. At the same time these principles 

 have aided the advancement of science only when they were de- 

 duced from experiment and observation. Whenever they were 

 established a priori, the)' have been found completely sterile. 



Tiniicus at length comes to the psychological and physiolo- 



