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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 June 2022
The soul's harmony
With each of them remaining a mixture of Sameness, Difference and Being, the Demiurge began to divide them as follows: (Tim. 35b2–3)
Interpretation of Tim. 35b2–3
For if all [the genera that constitute the soul] are in all, and the whole is homoiomerous with itself, then there would be no segregation of the unity from the continuity. After all, if in the case of bodies those that are similar are naturally conjoined without an intermediary, then surely to an even greater degree this will be so in the case of incorporeal natures. All the “parts”, as it were, are unified and the whole has been subordinated to the one. Nor will the parts be mixed up through the disposition of the whole, nor will the wholeness be removed because of the differentiation of the parts. One may also infer from these things that, with respect to all of its own parts, the soul is both divisible and indivisible; for if all of its parts participate in all the intermediate genera, then there is nothing one might take from it that is not constituted out of these genera.
With an eye to these facts, the ancient philosophers drew various inferences about the soul – that it is wholly Being, and Life and Intellect, and that whichever one of these three you assume, the remaining ones follow, since all the things in it run through all the others, and the soul is entirely single and its unity is completely perfect, and the part is consubstantial (homochrous, cf. 163.4) with the whole in its case. If each of the many parts of the soul is a certain substance (ousia tis), and if the parts are so many in number, then the soul's Being (ousia) will be equal in number to the parts, and likewise for the Sameness and the Difference. Each [of the three genera] is a single thing in Intellect (this is because Intellect is indivisible, for it is not the case that one part of Intellect is Sameness, while another part is Difference). But in the case of the soul, each [of the genera] <is many>, for the soul has been divided in accordance with substantial number and its parts have been harmonised with one another, making the soul one from many and a ‘whole from the parts’.
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