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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 49

28.1 · Plato: soul’s priority to body

From Plato’s Timaeus.

Although we are now attempting to speak of soul after body, god did not accordingly devise it as younger. For god, having bound them together, would not have allowed the older to be ruled by the younger. We, however, share greatly in chance and heedlessness, and so speak in much the same fashion. He constituted soul as ⟨prior⟩ to body and older both in origin and in excellence, as its mistress and ruler, with body to be ruled. He made it from the following ingredients and in the following way.¹³⁹⁴

28.2 · Being, sameness, and difference

From the indivisible being that always remains the same and the divisible being that comes to be in connection with bodies, he blended a third kind of being, intermediate between the two. Likewise, in the case of the nature of the same and that of the different, he constituted them in the same way, intermediate between their indivisible aspect and the aspect divided in connection with bodies.¹³⁹⁵

28.3 · A single mixture, divided into portions

Taking these three, he blended them all into a single form, forcibly fitting the nature of the different, which was hard to mix, into the same. Mixing them with being and making one out of three, he then divided this whole into as many portions as were fitting, each blended from the same, the different, and being. -¹³⁹⁶

28.4 · The invisible soul of heaven

The body of heaven has come to be visible, while soul itself is invisible, yet shares in reasoning and harmony. Brought into being by the best of intelligible and everlasting beings, it is the best of things that have been generated.¹³⁹⁷

28.5 · Knowing the same and the different

Since it is blended from these three constituents, the nature of the same, that of the different, and being, and has been divided and bound together in proportion, it revolves upon itself. Whenever it comes into contact with something whose being is dispersed, or with something whose being is indivisible, it declares, moving throughout itself, what a thing is the same as and what it differs from; and especially in relation to what, in what respect, how, and when each thing is or is affected in relation to each other thing, both among things that come to be and in relation to those that always remain the same;¹³⁹⁸

28.6 · Opinion, understanding, and knowledge

and the account that becomes true in the same manner, ⟨being⟩ concerned with the different and the same, is carried without voice or sound within what moves itself. When it concerns what is perceptible, and ⟨the⟩ circle of the different, being correct, reports throughout its entire soul, opinions and beliefs become firm and true. When, in turn, it concerns what is rational, and the smoothly revolving circle of the same declares these things, understanding and knowledge necessarily result. If anyone should ever call that being in which these two arise anything other than soul, he will say anything but the truth.¹³⁹⁹

29.1 · Plato: what no evil destroys

From Plato’s Republic, Book X.

“Then, when it is destroyed by no evil at all, whether its own or another’s, it clearly must exist always; and if it exists always, it is immortal.”

“Necessarily,” he said.

“Then let that stand so,” I said.¹⁴⁰⁰

29.2 · The number of souls

“And if it does, you realize that the souls would always be the same. They could not become fewer, since none is destroyed, nor again more numerous. For if anything immortal increased in number, you know that it would arise from what is mortal, and in the end everything would be immortal.”

“What you say is true.”¹⁴⁰¹

29.3 · Immortality and the soul’s true nature

“But,” I said, “let us believe neither that, since the argument will not allow it, nor that soul in its truest nature is such as to be full of great diversity, unlikeness, and difference within itself.”

“What do you mean?” he said.

“It is not easy,” I said, “for something to be everlasting if it is compounded of many things and has not been put together in the finest way, as soul has now appeared to us.”

“Certainly not likely.”

“That soul is immortal, then, both the argument just given and the others would compel us to accept.”¹⁴⁰²

30.1 · Plato: one power or several?

From Plato’s Republic, Book IV.

“The difficult question is whether we perform each action with this same thing, or, since there are three, one action with one and another with another: whether we learn with one of the things within us, become angry with another, and desire the pleasures of food, reproduction, and related things with a third; or whether we act with the whole soul in each of these cases whenever we are moved to act. These will be the difficult distinctions to establish adequately.”

“So it seems to me too,” he said.¹⁴⁰³

30.2 · Thirst, resistance, and the archer

“The soul of someone who is thirsty, in so far as it is thirsty, wants only to drink, desires this, and is impelled toward it.”

“Clearly.”

“Then if something ever pulls it back when it is thirsty, there would be something in it different from the thirsty element that drives it like a beast toward drinking. For, we say, the same thing cannot at the same time do contrary things with the same part of itself in relation to the same object.”

“Indeed not.”

“Just as, I think, it is inaccurate to say that an archer’s hands push the bow away and pull it toward him at the same time. One should say that one hand pushes it away and another draws it toward him.”

“Quite so,” he said.¹⁴⁰⁴

30.3 · What urges drinking and what restrains it

“Do we say, then, that some people are at times thirsty but unwilling to drink?”

“Certainly,” he said, “many people, and often.”

“What, then,” I said, “might one say about them? That their soul contains something commanding them to drink, but also something preventing it, which is different from and masters what commands?”

“So it seems to me,” he said.

“Does not what prevents such acts, when it arises, arise from reasoning, while what drives and pulls comes through affections and illnesses?”

“So it appears.”¹⁴⁰⁵

30.4 · Reason and appetite distinguished

“Then we shall not be unreasonable,” I said, “in judging them to be two and different from one another. We call that with which the soul reasons its rational element, and that with which it loves, hungers, thirsts, and flutters about other desires its unreasoning and appetitive element, the companion of certain satisfactions and pleasures.”

“No,” he said, “we would reasonably regard them in that way.”¹⁴⁰⁶

1394.The heading’s references identify Timaeus 34b-35b and 36e-37c. The order of exposition is distinguished from the priority attributed to soul. Genesei concerns origin or coming-to-be; aretēi concerns excellence. The supplied proteran, “prior,” is restored from Plato and remains marked. The subject is the soul of the cosmos, as the later reference to heaven makes explicit.

1395.Ousia is rendered “being” in this construction of the world-soul. The same and the different name constituents alongside being; they are not merely descriptions of identical or different bodies. The sentence forms an intermediate in each case before the three are blended together. This provides context for the later excerpts’ language of soul between indivisible and divisible.

1396.The mixture retains all three constituents in every portion. The closing dash reproduces the edition’s break between the two selected stretches of the Timaeus. The intervening account is not translated as though present in Stobaeus’s excerpt. The English “into the same” preserves the wording eis tauton without resolving it exclusively as “into sameness” or “into one whole.”

1397.The genitive “of intelligible and everlasting beings” qualifies “the best” who makes soul; “of things generated” qualifies soul as the best product. The English preserves the two groups. The passage joins soul’s invisibility with its participation in reasoning and harmony, in contrast to the visible heavenly body.

1398.The long sentence relates soul’s composition to its ability to distinguish identity, difference, and relations. Skedastē ousia is dispersed being; ameristos is indivisible. “In proportion” renders analogon. The repeated qualifications concerning relation, respect, manner, and time are retained, as is the distinction between things that come to be and things that remain the same.

1399.Logos here is an account or inward statement, explicitly without audible sound. The text connects perception with the circle of the different and understanding with the circle of the same. Printed logistikon is rendered “what is rational”; it is not silently replaced by “intelligible.” Both supplied words remain marked. Printed αὐτοῦ in the motion clause is understood reflexively in the English. The closing dual refers to nous and epistēmē, understanding and knowledge.

1400.Republic 610e-611b, as identified in the source heading. The excerpt begins within an argument: “it” refers to soul, whose destruction by its own or an alien evil has already been considered. This selection gives the resulting inference rather than the entire preceding demonstration. The first-person speaker is Socrates.

1401.“The souls” makes explicit the feminine plural understood in hai autai, “the same.” The immediate argument concerns their number: no loss through destruction and no increase from mortal things. “In the end” renders teleutōnta; it does not mean that dying itself makes each thing immortal.

1402.The qualification “in its truest nature” matters: the argument questions whether the soul’s present appearance reveals what it ultimately is. The objection concerns a compound that is not composed in the finest way, not every possible composition without qualification. Printed neuter forms with psychē remain in Greek; the English follows the intended reference to soul.

1403.The heading identifies Republic 436a-b and 439a-440a: the excerpt joins two separated passages. The next unit begins the later passage, without supplying the intervening discussion. The question is whether learning, anger, and appetite belong to distinct principles within soul or to the whole soul acting in each case.

1404.The restriction “in so far as it is thirsty” isolates thirst as the source of the impulse. The principle concerning opposites includes three qualifications: the same part, the same object, and the same time. The archer shows why apparently contrary actions need not belong to the same acting part.

1405.The opposition is internal: both the impulse and the restraint occur within the same person. Logismos is reasoning; pathēmata are affections or things undergone, and nosēmata illnesses. The wording is the dialogue’s explanation of the conflicting impulses, not a modern medical account.

1406.Logistikon names what reasons; alogiston what does not reason; epithymētikon what desires. “Flutters about” preserves the image in eptoētai, which can suggest excited or agitated movement. Plērōseis are fillings or satisfactions. The passage distinguishes two elements at this stage; the spirited element is the next question.