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A History of Greek Philosophy /
PLATO
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Page 16
The Timaeus is an attempt by Plato, under the guise of a Pythagorean philosopher, to image forth as in a vision or dream the actual framing of the universe, conceived as a realisation of the Eternal Thought or Idea. It will be remembered that in the analysis already given of the process of knowledge in individual men, Plato found that prior to the suggestions of the senses, though not coming into consciousness except in connection with sensation, men had ideas that gave them a power of rendering their sensations intelligible. In the Timaeus Plato attempts a vision of the universe as though he saw it working itself into actuality on the lines of those ideas. The vision is briefly as follows:
There is the Eternal Creator, who desired to make the world because He was good and free from jealousy, and therefore willed that all things should be like Himself; that is, that the formless, chaotic, unrealised void might receive form and order, and become, in short, real as He was. Thus creation is the process by which the Eternal Creator works out His own image, His own ideas, in and through that which is formless, that which has no name, which is nothing but possibility,—dead earth, namely, or Matter. And first the world-soul, image of the divine, is formed, on which as on a “diamond network” the manifold structure of things is fashioned—the stars, the seven planets with their sphere-music, the four elements, and all the various creatures, aetherial or fiery, aerial, aqueous, and earthy, with the consummation of them all in microcosm, in the animal world, and specially in man.
Cf. Plato Complete Works, Plato Home Page & Anthology, Guthrie : Life of Plato and philosophical influences, Research a KeyWord in Plato's Works
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/history-of-philosophy/plato.asp?pg=16
