V. With Chalcidius as Translator

V. D

...not a fable, but a true history of a possible way of life original: "vitę possibilis" suggested to your minds by a certain fate. Therefore, with fortune favoring us, proceed on the journey of the discourse you have begun; I, as becomes a proper listener, will prepare my mind and ears with attentive silence. Critias: Do you still trust, O Socrates, that the arrangement of the required preparation is suitable for you? For it pleased us that Timaeus, as one eminent above others in astronomy The study of the stars and celestial motions and one who has searched into the secrets of the nature of things, should speak in the first place, beginning from the constitution of the sensible world The physical world we can perceive with our senses down to the race and generation of men. I, truly, shall take up the men formed by his speech, and further, those imbued and educated by you to an excellent harvest; by a holier moderation of laws, according to Solon, I shall recall those most famous ancient citizens from the sacred books of the Egyptians. And before these, I shall set up a venerable spectacle of a people whom the fame of the Egyptian monuments celebrated as having been submerged in the deep of the sea by a flood. And so, I shall weave the discourse as if concerning our ancestors. Socrates: Truly, I have been magnificently invited today, as is given to be understood from the ordering of the preparation. Therefore, come, O Timaeus, take a taste of what has been begun, having called upon the divinity for aid, as is the custom. Timaeus: Truly, my Socrates. For since it is the custom for all—and as it were, a certain religious duty—who are about to do anything concerning either the greatest or the smallest matters, to pray to the divinity for help, how much more just is it for us, who are about to provide an account of the nature and substance of the universe, to invoke divine aid? Unless, plainly, we are carried away by some cruel fury and implacable madness. Let it be grasped by my prayers, then, especially that those things be said by us which please God, and then that we also may speak † suitably † Consequently and becomingly for the proposed work, and so far as you may easily follow. I shall unfold the speech according to the form already anticipated in my mind.

There is, therefore (as it seems to me at least), first a distinction to be made: what is that which always is, lacking generation That which was never "born" or created, but exists eternally, and what is that which is born and never truly is? The one is perceptible by the intellect through the guidance and investigation of reason, always the same. Furthermore, the other is object of opinion through irrational sense, and for that reason is uncertain, being born and dying, and never persevering in a constant and fixed state of existence. Everything, however, that is born is necessarily born from some cause. For nothing happens whose birth a legitimate cause and reason does not precede. Furthermore, the craftsman original: "opifex," often referred to as the Demiurge gives form to his work; indeed, by forming the likeness and emulation of the work according to the similarity of an immortal example that persists in its genuine state, he must necessarily effect an honorable image. But truly, looking toward that which is born, and contemplating the generated, it is least beautiful. Therefore, the whole heaven or world—or by whatever other name it is graced (for it must be done as is proper in every treatise: that it be considered at the beginning what it is that is being discussed; likewise, whether the world has always been without a beginning of time, or whether it obtained its origin from time, must be considered)—was made. Inasmuch as it is corporeal, and such as may be seen and touched; for it is the limit of this kind of sensible and corporeal nature. Furthermore, those sensible things which opinion, moved by some sense, presumes—all those things are made, and have their substance from some generation. But truly, it is established that those things which are made have their author. Therefore, it is as difficult to find the craftsman and father of the universe as it is impossible, once found, to speak of him worthily. Furthermore, there is no doubt toward what kind of example he looked when establishing the foundations of the worldly work: whether toward the immutable and that which possesses perpetual property, or toward that which is made and labored upon. For if the world is (as indeed it is) of incomparable beauty, and its craftsman and fabricator is the best, it is clear that the construction of the world was instituted according to the example of a pure and immutable property.