would have felt that there was as great an impiety in ranking theories
of physics first in the order of knowledge, as in placing the body
before the soul.

It is true, however, that the Timaeus is by no means confined to
speculations on physics. The deeper foundations of the Platonic
philosophy, such as the nature of God, the distinction of the sensible and
intellectual, the great original conceptions of time and space, also appear
in it. They are found principally in the first half of the dialogue. The
construction of the heavens is for the most part ideal; the cyclic year
serves as the connection between the world of absolute being and of
generation, just as the number of population in the Republic is the
expression or symbol of the transition from the ideal to the actual state.
In some passages we are uncertain whether we are reading a description of
astronomical facts or contemplating processes of the human mind, or of that
divine mind (Phil.) which in Plato is hardly separable from it. The
characteristics of man are transferred to the world-animal, as for example
when intelligence and knowledge are said to be perfected by the circle of
the Same, and true opinion by the circle of the Other; and conversely the
motions of the world-animal reappear in man; its amorphous state continues
in the child, and in both disorder and chaos are gradually succeeded by
stability and order. It is not however to passages like these that Plato
is referring when he speaks of the uncertainty of his subject, but rather
to the composition of bodies, to the relations of colours, the nature of
diseases, and the like, about which he truly feels the lamentable ignorance
prevailing in his own age.

We are led by Plato himself to regard the Timaeus, not as the centre or
inmost shrine of the edifice, but as a detached building in a different
style, framed, not after the Socratic, but after some Pythagorean model.