latter he would have arrived, though, perhaps, without any further result
or any sense of the greatness of the discovery, at the modern doctrine of
gravitation. He does not observe that water has an equal tendency towards
both water and earth. So easily did the most obvious facts which were
inconsistent with his theories escape him.

The general physical doctrines of the Timaeus may be summed up as follows:
(1) Plato supposes the greater masses of the elements to have been already
settled in their places at the creation: (2) they are four in number, and
are formed of rectangular triangles variously combined into regular solid
figures: (3) three of them, fire, air, and water, admit of transformation
into one another; the fourth, earth, cannot be similarly transformed: (4)
different sizes of the same triangles form the lesser species of each
element: (5) there is an attraction of like to like--smaller masses of the
same kind being drawn towards greater: (6) there is no void, but the
particles of matter are ever pushing one another round and round (Greek).
Like the atomists, Plato attributes the differences between the elements to
differences in geometrical figures. But he does not explain the process by
which surfaces become solids; and he characteristically ridicules
Democritus for not seeing that the worlds are finite and not infinite.

Section 4.

The astronomy of Plato is based on the two principles of the same and the
other, which God combined in the creation of the world. The soul, which is
compounded of the same, the other, and the essence, is diffused from the
centre to the circumference of the heavens. We speak of a soul of the
universe; but more truly regarded, the universe of the Timaeus is a soul,
governed by mind, and holding in solution a residuum of matter or evil,
which the author of the world is unable to expel, and of which Plato cannot