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Book I Chapter 21

Chapter 21: The World and Its Governance

On the world: whether it has a soul and is governed by providence, where its ruling part is, and whence it is nourished.⁶¹⁷

1 Plato: The world as a living being

Plato said that the world is a living being endowed with soul and intelligence, and that it is nourished from itself; he places the world’s ruling part in heaven. Thus he speaks as follows in the Timaeus:⁶¹⁸

1 Plato: From disorder to order

For God wished everything to be good and nothing bad, so far as possible. He therefore took over all that was visible, which was not at rest but moving discordantly and without order, and brought it out of disorder, judging the former condition altogether better than the latter. For it neither was nor is right for the best to do anything but what is most beautiful.⁶¹⁹

1 Plato: Intelligence, soul, and body

On reflection, then, he found that among things naturally visible, no work without intelligence could ever be more beautiful than one possessing intelligence, when whole is compared with whole; and that intelligence, in turn, cannot come to anything without soul. Through this reasoning he fashioned the universe, putting intelligence in soul and soul in body, so that the work he had accomplished might be as beautiful and as excellent as its nature allowed. Thus, according to the likely account, we must say that this world truly came to be a living being endowed with soul and intelligence through God’s providence.⁶²⁰

2 In the same work: Self-nourishment

For nothing went out of it, nor did anything come into it from anywhere, since there was nothing outside it. It was fashioned by art to provide itself with its own wasting away as nourishment, and to undergo and perform all its processes within itself and by itself.⁶²¹

3a ⟨Aëtius⟩: The world’s boundary

Empedocles held that the sun’s circuit traces the boundary of the world.

Seleucus of Erythrae and Heraclides of Pontus held the world to be unlimited.

Diogenes and Melissus held the all to be unlimited, but the world to be bounded.⁶²²

3b ⟨Aëtius⟩: The all and the whole

The Stoics distinguish the all from the whole: the all includes the unlimited void, while the whole is the world apart from the void. The world neither increases nor diminishes, though in its parts it sometimes extends into a greater space and sometimes contracts. The world’s generation began from earth, as from a center; and the center is the starting point of a sphere.⁶²³

3c ⟨Aëtius⟩: Soul and providence

All the others held the world to have a soul ⟨and⟩ to be governed by providence.

Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus held neither of these views: the world is constituted from atoms by a nature without reason.⁶²⁴

4 ⟨Plutarch⟩: Homer’s bounded world

Homer says that the world is bounded; this is shown in these words:

All things are divided three ways; each has his share of honor.

He has thus stated this expressly in a single line, for the unlimited cannot be divided into portions. He indicates the same thing also in the following words:⁶²⁵

4 ⟨Plutarch⟩: The allotted regions

When the lots were shaken, I won the gray sea for my lasting home; Hades won the misty darkness, Zeus won the ⟨broad⟩ heaven in the aether and the clouds; but earth and high Olympus remain common to us all.

Thus he has allotted the regions in between, leaving the outermost and bounding regions unallotted. And he has shown that earth is lowest of all and Olympus highest in the following passage:⁶²⁶

4 ⟨Plutarch⟩: Zeus’s chain

But if I in my turn were minded to pull with a will, I would pull you up, earth itself and sea itself with you; then I would fasten the chain around a peak of Olympus, and all would hang suspended in the air.

For he says that earth will be suspended, pulled up from its seat as the lowest region [as the highest region].⁶²⁷

5 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Chrysippus on “world”

From Chrysippus. Chrysippus says that the world is a system consisting of heaven, earth, and the natures within them; or the system consisting of gods, human beings, and the things that have come into being for their sake. In another sense, God is called “world,” as that according to which the ordering of the world arises and is brought to completion.⁶²⁸

5 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: The world’s support

Of the world so called in respect of its ordering, one part revolves around the center and another stays in place: the aether revolves, while earth, the liquids upon it, and air stay in place. For the densest part of all substance naturally supports everything, as bones do in an animal; this is called earth.⁶²⁹

5 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Seas and continents

Water is poured spherically around earth, having its force more evenly distributed. For earth has certain uneven projections rising up through the water, and these are called islands; those extending farther have been called continents, through ignorance of the fact that they too are surrounded by great seas.⁶³⁰

5 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: Air, aether, and stars

Air rises from the water as though evaporated, and is poured spherically around it; from air comes aether, which is most rarefied and most pure. The world so called in respect of its ordering is divided into these natures. What revolves in a circle around it is aether, in which the stars are established, both the fixed and the wandering, divine in nature, endowed with soul, and governed according to providence.⁶³¹

5 ⟨Arius Didymus⟩: The celestial spheres

The number of fixed stars cannot be grasped, while the wandering stars are seven in number, and all the wandering stars lie below the fixed stars. The fixed stars are arranged upon a single surface, as is also observed; the wandering stars occupy separate spheres, and all their spheres are enclosed by the sphere of the fixed stars.⁶³²

617.The heading asks several connected questions about the world as a living and ordered whole. Hēgemonikon, “ruling part,” is the directing center of such a whole; the following authors locate it differently. Kosmos is usually “world” here, while to pan is “the all” or “the universe” where the distinction matters.

618.The introductory report belongs to the compiler’s presentation. The quotation that follows is Timaeus 30a-b, where the speaker Timaeus explains why divine craftsmanship places intelligence within soul and soul within body. The statement about nourishment is illustrated separately in excerpt 2.

619.“The former condition” is order, understood as the goal. Wachsmuth’s Stobaean text has “out of disorder” without the explicit “into order” familiar from the continuous text of Plato. The translation preserves that shorter wording rather than silently adding the missing expression.

620.The “likely account” qualifies the kind of explanation offered; it is not omitted in favor of an unqualified assertion. “Whole compared with whole” limits the comparison to complete works, rather than comparing any arbitrary part with another.

621.Timaeus 33c-d; Wachsmuth cites 33c. “Outside it” makes explicit the sense of the compressed “for there was not”: no external material remained to enter the world. Its own losses are recycled as nourishment.

622.Wachsmuth supplies the attribution to Aëtius for excerpts 3a-c and 6a-f. The distinction between “the all” and a bounded “world” belongs to this report and is preserved even where it sits uneasily with other accounts of the named thinkers.

623.The report places expansion and contraction beside the denial of increase and diminution. The distinction allows changes in spatial extension without an increase or loss of the world’s constituent substance; compare the discussions of substance and growth in I.20.7.

624.“All the others” is the report’s broad classification, qualified by more differentiated accounts later in this chapter. “Without reason” means without a rational directing agency, not without natural processes. The conjunction is supplied from the parallel doxographical text.

625.Iliad 15.189, spoken by Poseidon about the division among himself, Zeus, and Hades. Wachsmuth identifies the surrounding interpretation with the work On the Life and Poetry of Homer transmitted under Plutarch’s name, chapters 94 and 103; the attribution is to Pseudo-Plutarch. The cosmological argument belongs to that interpreter.

626.Iliad 15.190-193. The act of shaking lots belongs to the opening of the second Greek line; English moves it into the first line for clarity. “Broad” is supplied from Homer. The prose takes earth and Olympus as the lower and upper limits of the divided regions.

627.Iliad 8.23-26: Zeus challenges the gods to pull against him on a chain. “You” is implicit in the quotation’s context. Wachsmuth rejects “as the highest region” as an alternative reading intruded beside “as the lowest region”; both remain visible, with the rejected wording in square brackets.

628.Wachsmuth supplies Arius Didymus, physical fragment 31 in Diels, as the source of this report. The two definitions concern the ordered system; the additional use of “world” names the divine principle of its ordering. “Natures” here refers to the constituent kinds of things.

629.The comparison with bones presents the earth as a structural support within a living whole. “Stays in place” expresses the contrast with celestial revolution; it does not imply that every process in earth, water, and air is motionless.

630.“Force” renders the printed ischyn, a difficult reading. Wachsmuth records conjectures meaning “flow,” “nature,” and “disposition,” but retains “force”; the translation follows his text. The account treats continents as very large islands surrounded by ocean.

631.The “wandering” stars are the planets in the ancient sense; the following list includes sun and moon. The “fixed” stars keep their mutual positions while their sphere revolves. These categories belong to the report’s model of the heavens.

632.“Below” means nearer the world’s center. The passage distinguishes an unascertainable number of fixed stars from the definite seven wanderers; it does not expressly call the number of fixed stars infinite.