[Inquiry] Re: Ideals Or Their Abuse

[Jon Awbrey]

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IOTA.  Note 5

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| Again, if these premisses be granted, it is wholly necessary that this Cosmos
| should be a Copy ['eikona'] of something.  Now in regard to every matter it is
| most important to begin at the natural beginning.  Accordingly, in dealing with
| a copy and its model, we must affirm that the accounts given will themselves be
| akin to the diverse objects which they serve to explain;  those which deal with
| what is abiding and firm and discernible by the aid of thought will be abiding
| and unshakable;  and in so far as it is possible and fitting for statements to
| be irrefutable and invincible, they must in no wise fall short thereof;  whereas
| the accounts of that which is copied after the likeness of that Model, and is
| itself a likeness, will be analogous thereto and possess likelihood;  for as
| Being is to Becoming, so is Truth to Belief.  Wherefore, Socrates, if in our
| treatment of a great host of matters regarding the Gods and the generation of
| the Universe we prove unable to give accounts that are always in all respects
| self-consistent and perfectly exact, be not thou surprised;  rather we should
| be content if we can furnish accounts that are inferior to none in likelihood,
| remembering that both I who speak and you who judge are but human creatures,
| so that it becomes us to accept the likely account of these matters and
| forbear to search beyond it.
|
| Plato, "Timaeus", 29B-29D
|
| Plato, "Timaeus",
| R.G. Bury (trans.), in:
|'Plato, Volume 9',  G.P. Goold (ed.),
| William Heinemann, London, UK, 1929, 1981.

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