PLUTARCH 46-120 C.E.

 

On the Generation of the Soul

 

It is so because Plato did not as a display of mathematical learning drag arithmetical and harmonic means in to a discourse on natural philosophy where they are not wanted but introduced them on the assumption that this calculation is especially appropriate to the composition of the soul. Yet certain people look for the prescribed proportions in the velocities of the planetary spheres, certain others rather in their distances, some in the magnitudes of the stars, and those with a reputation for exceedingly exact investigations in the diameters of the epicycles, assuming these to be the ends for which the artificer fitted to the heavenly bodies the soul that had been distributed into seven parts. Many carry over into this context Pythagorean notions too, multiplying by three the distances of the bodies from the middle....[1]

 

But the cleverness of these people is not concerned with any truth, and those others do not aim at accuracy at all. To those, however, who think these notions not remote from Plato’s meaning the following will appear to be closely connected with the musical ratios, that, there being five tetrachords, (and) the planets have been arranged in five intervals... so the sounds bounding the tetrachords correspond to the Planets....[2]

 

And we too have got from our elders the tradition that there are nine Muses, eight of them, just as Plato says, being occupied with things celestial (the seven planets plus the sphere of the fixed stars), and the ninth with those about the earth to cast a spell upon them recalling them from vagrancy and discord and settling their capriciousness and confusion.

 

Consider, however, whether the heavens and the heavenly bodies are not guided by the soul with her own harmonious motions when she has become most provident and most just and whether she has not become such by reason of the concordant ratios, semblances of which are incorporated in the parts of the universe that are visible and seen, that is in bodies, but the primary and fundamental property of which has been blended invisibly in the soul and renders her concordant and docile, all her other parts always agreeing with the part that is best and most divine,... Nevertheless the product of those ratios and numbers used by the artificer is the soul’s own harmony and concord with herself, whereby she has filled heaven, into which she has come, with countless goods and has arrayed the terrestrial regions with seasons and measured changes in the best and fairest way for the generation and preservation of things that have come to be.[3]

 

 

On Science,

 

1. Ancient natural science, among both the Greeks and foreign nations, took the form of a scientific account hidden in mythology, veiled for the most part in riddles and hints, or of a theology such as is found in mystery ceremonies in it what is spoken is less clear to the masses than what is un­said, and what is unsaid gives cause for more speculation than what is said. This is evident from the Orphic poems and the accounts given by Phrygians and Egyptians. But nothing does more to reveal what was in the mind of the ancients than the rites of initiation and the ritual acts that are performed in religious services with symbolical intent.

 

4. But those who prefer to understand the story in a scientific and seemly sense identify Hera and Leto in the following way; Hera is the earth and Leto night being an oblivion (Lethe) experienced by those who give themselves to sleep, and night is nothing but the earth’s shadow. For the earth hides the sun when it has reached the west, and then its shadow spreads upwards to darken the air. And this is the reason for the disappearance of full moons in eclipse; at that time the shadow of the earth falls upon the moon as it moves in its orbit, and darkens its light.[4]