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Book I Chapter 47

Chapter 47: On human nature

On human nature.¹¹⁶⁴

1.1 · Plato: completing the account of the world

From Plato, from the Timaeus.

The account we were charged at the outset to give, concerning the universe down to the generation of human beings, now seems almost complete. We must briefly mention in turn how the other living creatures came into being, without unnecessarily prolonging the subject; for one would then seem to oneself more measured in discussions of this kind. Let the account, then, proceed as follows.¹¹⁶⁵

1.2 · Sexual difference and a second birth

Of the men who had come into being, those who were cowardly and lived unjust lives were, according to the likely account, transformed into women at their second birth. At that time, for these reasons, the gods devised the desire for sexual intercourse, forming an ensouled creature in us and another in women, and making each in the following way.¹¹⁶⁶

1.3 · The passage of seed

They pierced a connection from the outlet for drink to the marrow that extends continuously from the head down the neck and through the spine, which we called seed in our earlier account. This outlet receives and discharges the drink after it has passed through the lung, beneath the kidneys, into the bladder, and has been compressed by the breath.¹¹⁶⁷ The marrow, being ensouled and having acquired a breathing passage, instilled in the outlet through which it breathed a vital desire to flow out, and so produced the desire to procreate.¹¹⁶⁸

1.4 · The male organ and the womb

Hence the male sexual organ has become disobedient and self-willed, like a creature that will not listen to reason, and through frenzied desires attempts to dominate everything. For the same reasons, what are called the womb and uterus in women contain a creature desirous of childbearing. When it remains fruitless for a long time beyond the proper season, it bears this with angry resentment; wandering everywhere through the body, obstructing the passages of breath and preventing breathing, it produces extreme distress and all manner of other diseases,¹¹⁶⁹

1.5 · Conception and birth

until the desire and love of both bring them together and, plucking fruit as though from trees, sow in the womb as in a field living creatures invisible through their smallness and as yet unformed. They then differentiate these and nourish them within until they are large; afterward they bring them into the light and complete the birth of living creatures. Women, then, and the whole female sex came into being in this way.¹¹⁷⁰

1.6 · Birds and earthbound creatures

The tribe of birds was refashioned, growing feathers instead of hair, from harmless but light-minded men. They studied the heavens, yet in their simplicity supposed that proofs obtained through sight were the most reliable proofs about them. Land animals and beasts, in turn, arose from those who made no use of philosophy and gave no consideration at all to the nature of the heavens. They no longer used the revolutions within the head, but followed the parts of the soul around the breast as their rulers.¹¹⁷¹

1.7 · The multiplication and loss of feet

Because of these habits, they planted their forelimbs and heads upon the earth, drawn toward it by kinship. Their heads became elongated and assumed all manner of shapes, according to how each creature’s revolutions had been compressed through disuse. For this reason their kind grew four-footed or many-footed: the god placed more supports beneath the more foolish, so that they might be drawn still closer to the earth. As for the most foolish of these, whose whole bodies were stretched completely toward the ground, the gods made them without feet, crawling on the earth, since they had no further need of feet.¹¹⁷²

1.8 · Aquatic life and changes of embodiment

The fourth kind, aquatic life, arose from the very most senseless and ignorant. Their refashioners no longer judged them worthy even of pure breathing, since every sort of wrongdoing had defiled their souls. Instead of the fine, pure breathing of air, they thrust them into the murky, deep breathing of water. Thus arose the race of fish, shellfish, and all aquatic creatures, allotted the lowest dwellings as punishment for the lowest ignorance. In accordance with all this, then as now, living creatures change into one another, undergoing transformation through the loss and acquisition of intellect and folly.¹¹⁷³

1.9 · The visible cosmos

Let us now say that the account of the universe has reached its end. For this cosmos, having received mortal and immortal living creatures and been filled with them, has thus become a visible living creature encompassing visible things, an image of its maker, a perceptible god, greatest and best, most beautiful and most complete: this one heaven, unique in its kind.¹¹⁷⁴

2 · Plato: perception and the passions

From Plato, from the Timaeus.

First, then, perception would necessarily arise in all as an innate accompaniment of violent affections; second, love mingled with pleasure and pain; and in addition to these, fear and anger, everything that follows them, and everything naturally opposed to them.¹¹⁷⁵

3 · Plato: the name “human being”

From Plato, from the Cratylus.

The human being was rightly named anthrōpos, because he examines what he has seen.¹¹⁷⁶

4 · Plato: most people lie between the extremes

From Plato, from the Phaedo.

Good people and bad people are very few in each class; those between them are the most numerous.¹¹⁷⁷

5 · Plato: place and human character

From Plato, Laws, Book V.

For, Megillus and Clinias, let us not overlook this matter concerning places, as though some places did not differ from others in producing better and worse human beings. We must not legislate in opposition to these differences.¹¹⁷⁸ Some places are unfavorable or favorable because of their various winds and exposures to the sun, others because of their waters, and others because of the very nourishment supplied by the earth. This produces better and worse effects upon bodies and is no less capable of bringing about all such effects in souls.¹¹⁷⁹

1164.The chapter contains fifteen excerpts. Its general heading is absent from F and P but is printed by Wachsmuth. Decimal subdivisions of longer excerpts are added here solely to facilitate comparison of the facing languages.

1165.Timaeus 90e-92c, the closing section of the dialogue. The speaker is Timaeus. The reference to a measured account introduces a brief narrative of the origins of sexual difference and the several kinds of animals.

1166.The passage presents sexual difference through a hierarchical myth of rebirth: “us” identifies the male speaker’s standpoint. “According to the likely account” qualifies the narrative. Its moral ranking of the sexes belongs to that narrative; it is retained as part of the text, not adopted as an explanation of human biology.

1167.The passage identifies reproductive seed with marrow and describes drink as passing through the lung. These are features of the dialogue’s ancient physiology. The English rearranges the first sentence’s clauses to make the two connected passages intelligible.

1168.The syntax of “having acquired a breathing passage, this through which it breathed” is difficult. The translation takes the demonstrative to refer to the outlet and understands desire as imparted to it. Archer-Hind, Timaeus (1888), note on 91b, also flags a possible textual defect. No conjectural Greek is substituted.

1169.The sentence continues in the next unit. Mētra and hystera are two names for the womb, not two separate organs. Its movement through the body belongs to the ancient “wandering womb” account. Both male and female reproductive impulses are portrayed as creatures capable of resisting rational control.

1170.The agricultural image joins seed, field, nourishment, and birth. “Differentiate” renders diakrinantes: the initially unformed creatures acquire distinct structures. The text keeps desire and love as the grammatical agents throughout the sequence.

1171.The “revolutions” are the circular movements associated with rational thought in the Timaeus. The myth connects bodily form with a previous way of using, or failing to use, reason. Meteorologikoi here denotes students of things aloft, especially the heavens, rather than of weather alone.

1172.The number of limbs is explained through the soul’s earthward inclination. The Greek moves from “the god” to an unnamed plural subject, rendered “the gods,” recalling the makers in the preceding narrative. “Kinship” gives the reason for the earthward attraction within the myth.

1173.The account ends with continuing exchanges between forms of life, governed by intellectual and moral condition. “Lowest” retains the repeated eschatos, which links the extremity of ignorance with the remoteness or depth of the allotted dwelling.

1174.The translation follows Wachsmuth’s printed poiētou, “maker,” and the nominative theos, “god.” His apparatus also records noētou, “intelligible,” and the genitive theou, “of a god,” familiar from a different reading of this sentence. Those alternatives are not silently substituted. Monogenēs emphasizes the cosmos’s uniqueness.

1175.Timaeus 42a. Pathēmata are things undergone or affections, here the forcible disturbances accompanying embodiment. “Innate accompaniment” conveys symphyton, something that grows together with a being; the passage then enumerates its emotional endowments.

1176.Cratylus 399c. The proposed explanation plays on anthrōpos and anathrōn ha opōpe, “examining what he has seen.” It is a philosophical wordplay within the dialogue, not an established historical derivation of the Greek noun.

1177.Phaedo 90a. The excerpt preserves an infinitive construction detached from its introductory clause; the English gives it as a statement. Sphodra, “very,” stands with “few” in the printed wording.

1178.Laws 747d-e. Wachsmuth retains ouk, “not,” in the first subordinate clause, although Ficino deleted it. “As though ... did not” interprets that difficult negative construction in light of the differences asserted immediately afterward; the Greek negative remains visible.

1179.The printed enaisioi is “favorable” or “auspicious,” paired with allokotoi, literally “strange” or “uncongenial.” The apparatus records exaisioi as an alternative, but that is not the text printed here. The argument extends the influence of environment and food from bodily condition to character.