TIMAEUS BY PLATO, EXCERPT

p. 1234, “Timaeus,” by Plato; PLATO: COMPLETE WORKS, John M. Cooper, Editor; D.S. Hutchinson, Associate Editor (Hackett Publishing Company, Indiapolis/Cambridge: 1997) “Timaeus: That I will, Socrates. Surely, anyone with any sense at all will always call upon a god before setting out on any venture, whatever its importance. In our case, we are about to make speeches about the universe—whether it has an origin or even if it does not—and so if we're not to go completely astray we have no choice but to call upon the gods and goddesses, and pray that they above all will approve all we have to say, and that in consequence we will, too... “As I see it, then, we must begin by making the following distinction: What is that which always is and has no becoming, and what is it that which becomes but never is? The former is grasped by understanding, which involves a reasoned account. It is unchanging. The latter is grasped by opinion, which involves unreasoning sense perception. It comes to be and passes away but never really is. Now everything that comes to be must of necessity come to be by the agency of some cause, for it is impossible for anything to come to be without some cause. So whenever the craftsman looks at what is always changeless and, using a thing of that kind as his model, reproduces its form and character, then, of necessity, all that he so completes is beautiful. But were he to look at a thing that has come to be and use as his model something that has been begotten, his work will lack beauty.”