(11) With respect to generation also, the Pythagoreans are said to have made the following observations. In the first place, they thought it necessary to guard against what is called untimely [offspring]. For neither untimely plants, nor animals, are good; but prior to their bearing fruit, it is necessary that a certain time should intervene, in order that seeds and fruit may be produced from strong and perfect bodies. It is requisite, therefore, that boys and virgins should be accustomed to labors and exercises, and appropriate endurance, and that food should be given to them adapted to a life of labor, temperance, and endurance. But there are many things of this kind in human life, which it is better to learn at a late period, and among these is the use of venery.

It is necessary, therefore, that a boy should be so educated, as not to seek after such a connexion as this, within the twentieth year of his age. But when he arrives at this age, he should use venery rarely. This however will be the case, if he thinks that a good habit of body is an honorable and beautiful thing. For intemperance and a good habit of body, are not very much adapted to subsist together in the same person. It is also said, that those laws were praised by the Pythagoreans, which existed prior to their time in Grecian cities, and which prohibited the having connexion with a woman who is a mother, or a daughter, or a sister, either in a temple, or in a public place.

For it is beautiful and advantageous that there should be numerous impediments to this energy. These men also apprehended, as it seems, that preternatural generations, and those which are effected in conjunction with wanton insolence, should be entirely prevented from taking place; but that those should be suffered to remain, which are according to nature, and subsist with temperance, and which take place in the chaste and legal procreation of children.

(2) But individuals are brought into being by the union of the Reason-Principles of the parents, male and female: this seems to do away with a definite Reason-Principle for each of the offspring: one of the parents- the male let us say- is the source; and the offspring is determined not by Reason-Principles differing from child to child but by one only, the father's or that of the father's father.

No: a distinct Reason-Principle may be the determinant for the child since the parent contains all: they would become effective at different times.

And so of the differences among children of the same parents: it is a matter of varying dominance: either the offspring- whether it so appears or not- has been mainly determined by, now, the male, now, the female or, while each principle has given itself entire and lies there within, yet it effectively moulds one portion of the bodily substance rather than another.

And how are the differences caused by place to be explained?

Is the differentiating element to be found in the varying resistance of the material of the body?

No: if this were so, all men with the exception of one only would be untrue to nature.

Difference everywhere is a good, and so there must be differing archetypes, though only to evil could be attribute any power in Matter to thwart nature by overmastering the perfect Reason-Principles, hidden but given, all.

Still, admitting the diversity of the Reason-principles, why need there by as many as there are men born in each Period, once it is granted that different beings may take external manifestation under the presence of the same principles?

Under the presence of all; agreed: but with the dominance of the very same? That is still open to question.

May we not take it that there may be identical reproduction from one Period to another but not in the same Period?

(12) They likewise were of opinion that great providential attention should be paid by those who beget children, to the future progeny. The first, therefore, and the greatest care which should be taken by him who applies himself to the procreation of children is, that he lives temperately and healthfully, that he neither fills himself with food unseasonably, nor uses such aliments as may render the habits of the body worse than they were, and above all things, that he avoids intoxication. For they thought that depraved seed was produced from a bad, discordant, and turbid temperament. And universally they were of opinion, that none but an indolent and inconsiderate person would attempt to produce an animal, and lead it into existence, without providing with all possible diligence that its ingress into being and life might be most elegant and pleasing.

For those that are lovers of dogs, pay every possible attention to the generation of whelps, in order that they may be produced from such things as are proper, and when it is proper, and in such a way as is proper, and thus may become a good offspring. The same attention also is paid by those who are lovers of birds. And it is evident that others also who are studious about the procreation of generous animals, endeavour by all possible means, that the generation of them may not be in vain. It would be absurd therefore that men should pay no attention to their own offspring, but should both beget them casually and with perfect carelessness, and, after they are begotten, nourish and educate them with extreme negligence.

For this is the most powerful and most manifest cause of the vice and depravity of the greater part of mankind. For with the multitude the procreation of children is undertaken in a beastly and rash manner. And such were the assertions, and such the doctrine of these men, which they verified both in words and deeds, respecting temperance; these precepts having been originally received by them from Pythagoras himself, like certain oracles delivered by the Pythian Apollo.

(1) And this indeed is what he said to the young men in the Gymnasium. But when they had told their parents what they had heard, a thousand men having called Pythagoras into the senate-house, and praised him for what he had said to their sons, desired him, if he had any thing advantageous to say to the Crotonians, to unfold it to those who were the leaders of the administration. He was also the first that advised them to build a temple to the Muses, in order that they might preserve the existing concord. For he observed that all these divinities were called by one common name, [the Muses,] that they subsisted in conjunction with each other, especially rejoiced in common honors, and in short, that there was always one and the same choir of the Muses.

He likewise farther observed, that they comprehended in themselves symphony, harmony, rythm, and all things which procure concord. They also evince that their power does not alone extend to the most beautiful theorems, but likewise to the symphony and harmony of things. In the next place, he said it was necessary they should apprehend that they received their country from the multitude of the citizens, as a common deposit. Hence, it was requisite they should so govern it, that they might faithfully transmit it to their posterity, as an hereditary possession. And that this would firmly be effected, if they were equal in all things to the citizens, and surpassed them in nothing else than justice. For men knowing that every place requires justice, have asserted in fables that Themis has the same order with Jupiter, that Dice, i. e. justice, is seated by Pluto, and that Law is established in cities; in order that he who does not act justly in things which his rank in society requires him to perform, may at the same time appear to be unjust towards the whole world.

He added, it was proper that the senators should not make use of any of the Gods for the purpose of an oath, but that their language should be such as to render them worthy of belief even without oaths. And likewise, that they should so manage their own domestic affairs, as to make the government of them the object of their deliberate choice. That they should also be genuinely disposed towards their own offspring, as being the only animals that have a sensation of this conception. And that they should so associate with a wife the companion of life, as to be mindful that other compacts are engraved in tables and pillars, but those with wives are inserted in children. That they should likewise endeavour to be beloved by their offspring, not through nature, of which they were not the causes, but through deliberate choice: for this is voluntary beneficence.

(41) Timaeus: and setting them each as it were in a chariot He showed them the nature of the Universe, and declared unto them the laws of destiny,—namely, how that the first birth should be one and the same ordained for all, in order that none might be slighted by Him; and how it was needful that they, when sown each into his own proper organ of time, should grow into the most god-fearing of living creatures;

(7) "And for birth there is no written law (for otherwise it would have been transcribed). All beings beget and give birth alike, having received by God's righteousness an innate equality. The Creator and Father of all with his own righteousness appointed this, just as he gave equally the eye to all to enable them to see. He did not make a distinction between female and male, rational and irrational, nor between anything and anything else at all; rather he shared out sight equally and universally. It was given to all alike by a single command. As the laws (he says) could not punish men who were ignorant of them, they taught men that they were transgressors. But the laws, by pre-supposing the existence of private property, cut up and destroyed the universal equality decreed by the divine law." As he does not understand the words of the apostle where he says "Through the law I knew sin," he says that the idea of Mine and Thine came into existence through the laws so that the earth and money were no longer put to common use. And so also with marriage. "For God has made vines for all to use in common, since they are not protected against sparrows and a thief; and similarly corn and the other fruits. But the abolition, contrary to divine law, of community of use and equality begat the thief of domestic animals and fruits.

(6) But in fact everything follows its own Kind; the birth is a horse because it comes from the Horse Kind, a man by springing from the Human Kind; offspring answers to species. Allow the kosmic circuit its part, a very powerful influence upon the thing brought into being: allow the stars a wide material action upon the bodily part of the man, producing heat and cold and their natural resultants in the physical constitution; still does such action explain character, vocation and especially all that seems quite independent of material elements, a man taking to letters, to geometry, to gambling, and becoming an originator in any of these pursuits? And can we imagine the stars, divine beings, bestowing wickedness? And what of a doctrine that makes them wreak vengeance, as for a wrong, because they are in their decline or are being carried to a position beneath the earth- as if a decline from our point of view brought any change to themselves, as if they ever ceased to traverse the heavenly spheres and to make the same figure around the earth.

Nor may we think that these divine beings lose or gain in goodness as they see this one or another of the company in various aspects, and that in their happier position they are benignant to us and, less pleasantly situated, turn maleficent. We can but believe that their circuit is for the protection of the entirety of things while they furnish the incidental service of being letters on which the augur, acquainted with that alphabet, may look and read the future from their pattern- arriving at the thing signified by such analogies as that a soaring bird tells of some lofty event.

(3) This also is evident, that [human] life becomes different from disposition and action. But it is necessary that the disposition should be either worthy or depraved; and that action should be attended either with felicity or misery. And a worthy disposition, indeed, participates of virtue; but a bad one of vice. With respect to actions, also, those that are prosperous are attended with felicity; (for they derive their completion through looking to reason) but those that are unfortunate, are attended with misery; for they are frustrated of the end. Hence, it is not only necessary to learn virtue, but also to possess and use it, either for security, or increase, [of property when it is too little] or, which is the greatest thing of all, for the emendation of families and cities.

For it is not only necessary to have the possession of things beautiful, but also the use of them. All these things, however, will take place, when a man lives in a city that uses equitable laws. And these, indeed, I say, are what is called the horn of Amalthea. For all things are contained in equitable legislation. And without this, the greatest good of human nature can neither be effected, nor, when effected, be increased and become permanent. For this comprehends in itself virtue, and the tendency to virtue; because excellent natures are generated according to it. Manners, likewise, studies, and laws, subsist through this in the most excellent condition; and besides these, rightly-deciding reason, and piety and sanctity towards the most honorable natures.

So that it is necessary that he who is to be happy, and whose life is to be prosperous, should live and die in a country governed by equitable laws, relinquishing all illegality. At the same time what has been said is attended with necessity. For man is a part of society, and hence from the same reasoning, will become entire and perfect, if he not only associates with others, but associates in a becoming manner. For some things are naturally adapted to subsist in many things, and not in one thing; others in one thing, and not in many; but others both in many, and in one thing, and on this account in one thing, because in many. For harmony, indeed, and symphony and number, are naturally adapted to be ingenerated in many things.

For nothing which makes a whole from these parts, is sufficient to itself. But acuteness of seeing and hearing, and swiftness of feet, subsist in one thing alone. Felicity, however, and the virtue of soul, subsist both in one thing and in many, in a whole, and in the universe. And on this account they subsist in one thing, because they also subsist in many: and they subsist in many, because they are inherent in a whole and in the universe. For the orderly distribution of the whole nature of things methodically arranges each particular. And the orderly distribution of particulars gives completion to the whole of things and to the universe. But this follows from the whole being naturally prior to the part, and not the part to the whole . For if the world was not, neither the sun nor the moon would exist, nor the planets, nor the fixed stars. But the world existing, each of these also exists.

(41) Timaeus: yet to will to dissolve that which is fairly joined together and in good case were the deed of a wicked one. Wherefore ye also, seeing that ye were generated, are not wholly immortal or indissoluble, yet in no wise shall ye be dissolved nor incur the doom of death, seeing that in my will ye possess a bond greater and more sovereign than the bonds wherewith, at your birth, ye were bound together. Now, therefore, what I manifest and declare unto you do ye learn. Three mortal kinds still remain ungenerated; but if these come not into being the Heaven will be imperfect; for it will not contain within itself the whole sum of the hinds of living creatures, yet contain them it must if

(20) With even greater clarity he adds: "The cause of these things was the material element in the world's constitution, which was at one time bound up with its ancient nature. For before it came into its present ordered state it was in a condition of great chaos." To the same effect in the Laws he laments the of men saying: "The gods had mercy on mankind which born for trouble, and to give them rest from their labours appointed the changing cycle of feasts." And in the Epinomis discusses the causes of this pitiful condition and says this:)m the beginning birth was difficult for every human being; to get to the state of being an embryo, then to be born, and l to be nourished and educated, all this is attended by count- pains, as we all agree." What then? Does not Heraclitus call birth death, just as Pythagoras and Socrates in the Gorgias,54 when he says: "Death is what we see when we are awake; and what we see in our sleep is a dream." But enough of this. When we discuss First Principles we consider the difference between the views of the philosophers and those of the Marcionites. But I think I have shown clearly enough that Marcion took from Plato the starting-point of his "strange" doctrines, without either grateful acknowledgment or understanding.

(3) In the case of twin birth among human beings how can we make out the Reason-Principles to be different; and still more when we turn to the animals and especially those with litters?

Where the young are precisely alike, there is one Reason-Principle.

But this would mean that after all there are not as many Reason Principles as separate beings?

As many as there are of differing beings, differing by something more than a mere failure in complete reproduction of their Idea.

And why may not this occur also in beings untouched by differentiation, if indeed there be any such?

A craftsman even in constructing an object identical with a model must envisage that identity in a mental differentiation enabling him to make a second thing by bringing in some difference side by side with the identity: similarly in nature, where the thing comes about not by reasoning but in sole virtue of Reason-Principles, that differentiation must be included in the archetypal idea, though it is not in our power to perceive the difference.

The consideration of Quantity brings the same result:

If production is undetermined in regard to Quantity, each thing has its distinct Reason-Principle: if there is a measured system the Quantity has been determined by the unrolling and unfolding of the Reason-Principles of all the existences.

Thus when the universe has reached its term, there will be a fresh beginning, since the entire Quantity which the Kosmos is to exhibit, every item that is to emerge in its course, all is laid up from the first in the Being that contains the Reason-Principles.

Are we, then, looking to the brute realm, to hold that there are as many Reason-Principles as distinct creatures born in a litter?

Why not? There is nothing alarming about such limitlessness in generative forces and in Reason-Principles, when Soul is there to sustain all.

As in Soul so in Divine Mind there is this infinitude of recurring generative powers; the Beings there are unfailing.

(18) Socrates: as their actual kinsmen—as brothers and sisters, if of a suitable age; as parents and grandparents, if more advanced in age; and as children and children's children, if junior in age. Timaeus: Yes, this also, as you say, is easy to recollect. Socrates: And in order that, to the best of our power, they might at once become as good as possible in their natural characters, do we not recollect how we said that the rulers, male and female, in dealing with marriage-unions must contrive to secure, by some secret method of allotment,

(8) Thus we come to our enquiry as to the degree of excellence found in things of this Sphere, and how far they belong to an ordered system or in what degree they are, at least, not evil.

Now in every living being the upper parts- head, face- are the most beautiful, the mid and lower members inferior. In the Universe the middle and lower members are human beings; above them, the Heavens and the Gods that dwell there; these Gods with the entire circling expanse of the heavens constitute the greater part of the Kosmos: the earth is but a central point, and may be considered as simply one among the stars. Yet human wrong-doing is made a matter of wonder; we are evidently asked to take humanity as the choice member of the Universe, nothing wiser existent!

But humanity, in reality, is poised midway between gods and beasts, and inclines now to the one order, now to the other; some men grow like to the divine, others to the brute, the greater number stand neutral. But those that are corrupted to the point of approximating to irrational animals and wild beasts pull the mid-folk about and inflict wrong upon them; the victims are no doubt better than the wrongdoers, but are at the mercy of their inferiors in the field in which they themselves are inferior, where, that is, they cannot be classed among the good since they have not trained themselves in self-defence.

A gang of lads, morally neglected, and in that respect inferior to the intermediate class, but in good physical training, attack and throw another set, trained neither physically nor morally, and make off with their food and their dainty clothes. What more is called for than a laugh?

And surely even the lawgiver would be right in allowing the second group to suffer this treatment, the penalty of their sloth and self-indulgence: the gymnasium lies there before them, and they, in laziness and luxury and listlessness, have allowed themselves to fall like fat-loaded sheep, a prey to the wolves.

But the evil-doers also have their punishment: first they pay in that very wolfishness, in the disaster to their human quality: and next there is laid up for them the due of their Kind: living ill here, they will not get off by death; on every precedent through all the line there waits its sequent, reasonable and natural- worse to the bad, better to the good.

This at once brings us outside the gymnasium with its fun for boys; they must grow up, both kinds, amid their childishness and both one day stand girt and armed. Then there is a finer spectacle than is ever seen by those that train in the ring. But at this stage some have not armed themselves- and the duly armed win the day.

Not even a God would have the right to deal a blow for the unwarlike: the law decrees that to come safe out of battle is for fighting men, not for those that pray. The harvest comes home not for praying but for tilling; healthy days are not for those that neglect their health: we have no right to complain of the ignoble getting the richer harvest if they are the only workers in the fields, or the best.

Again: it is childish, while we carry on all the affairs of our life to our own taste and not as the Gods would have us, to expect them to keep all well for us in spite of a life that is lived without regard to the conditions which the Gods have prescribed for our well-being. Yet death would be better for us than to go on living lives condemned by the laws of the Universe. If things took the contrary course, if all the modes of folly and wickedness brought no trouble in life- then indeed we might complain of the indifference of a Providence leaving the victory to evil.

Bad men rule by the feebleness of the ruled: and this is just; the triumph of weaklings would not be just.

(3) And every God by his own proper power brought forth what was appointed him. Thus there arose four-footed beasts, and creeping things, and those that in the water dwell, and things with wings, and everything that beareth seed, and grass, and shoot of every flower, all having in themselves seed of again-becoming. And they selected out the births of men for gnosis of the works of God and attestation of the energy of Nature; the multitude of men for lordship over all beneath the heaven and gnosis of its blessings, that they might increase in increasing and multiply in multitude, and every soul infleshed by revolution of the Cyclic Gods, for observation of the marvels of Heaven and Heaven's Gods' revolution, and of the works of God and energy of Nature, for tokens of its blessings, for gnosis of the power of God, that they might know the fates that follow good and evil [deeds] and learn the cunning work of all good arts.

(4) So it is with the individual souls; the appetite for the divine Intellect urges them to return to their source, but they have, too, a power apt to administration in this lower sphere; they may be compared to the light attached upwards to the sun, but not grudging its presidency to what lies beneath it. In the Intellectual, then, they remain with soul-entire, and are immune from care and trouble; in the heavenly sphere, absorbed in the soul-entire, they are administrators with it just as kings, associated with the supreme ruler and governing with him, do not descend from their kingly stations: the souls indeed are thus far in the one place with their overlord; but there comes a stage at which they descend from the universal to become partial and self-centred; in a weary desire of standing apart they find their way, each to a place of its very own. This state long maintained, the soul is a deserter from the All; its differentiation has severed it; its vision is no longer set in the Intellectual; it is a partial thing, isolated, weakened, full of care, intent upon the fragment; severed from the whole, it nestles in one form of being; for this, it abandons all else, entering into and caring for only the one, for a thing buffeted about by a worldful of things: thus it has drifted away from the universal and, by an actual presence, it administers the particular; it is caught into contact now, and tends to the outer to which it has become present and into whose inner depths it henceforth sinks far.

With this comes what is known as the casting of the wings, the enchaining in body: the soul has lost that innocency of conducting the higher which it knew when it stood with the All-Soul, that earlier state to which all its interest would bid it hasten back.

It has fallen: it is at the chain: debarred from expressing itself now through its intellectual phase, it operates through sense, it is a captive; this is the burial, the encavernment, of the Soul.

But in spite of all it has, for ever, something transcendent: by a conversion towards the intellective act, it is loosed from the shackles and soars- when only it makes its memories the starting point of a new vision of essential being. Souls that take this way have place in both spheres, living of necessity the life there and the life here by turns, the upper life reigning in those able to consort more continuously with the divine Intellect, the lower dominant where character or circumstances are less favourable.

All this is indicated by Plato, without emphasis, where he distinguishes those of the second mixing-bowl, describes them as "parts," and goes on to say that, having in this way become partial, they must of necessity experience birth.

Of course, where he speaks of God sowing them, he is to be understood as when he tells of God speaking and delivering orations; what is rooted in the nature of the All is figuratively treated as coming into being by generation and creation: stage and sequence are transferred, for clarity of exposition, to things whose being and definite form are eternal.

(8) Legislators, moreover, do not allow those who are unmarried to discharge the highest magisterial offices. For instance, the legislator of the Spartans imposed a fine not on bachelorhood only, but on monogamy? and late marriage, and single life. And the renowned Plato orders the man who has not married to pay a wife's maintenance into the public treasury, and to give to the magistrates a suitable sum of money as expenses. For if they shall not beget children, not having married, they produce, as far as in them lies, a scarcity of men, and dissolve states and the world that is composed of them, impiously doing away with divine generation. It is also unmanly and weak to shun living with a wife and children. For of that of which the loss is an evil, the possession is by all means a good; and this is the case with the rest of things. But the loss of children is, they say, among the chiefest evils: the possession of children is consequently a good thing; and if it be so, so also is marriage. It is said:

(1) Moreover, you inquire, and at the same time doubt, “ how it comes to pass that the Gods do not hear him who invokes them, if he is impure from venereal connexions; but, at the same time, they do not refuse to lead any one to illegal venery .” You have, indeed, a clear solution of these things from what has been before said; if they are done contrary to [human] laws, but are effected according to another order and cause more excellent than laws. Or if it happens that things of this kind are conformable to the mundane harmony and friendship, yet produce a conflict in parts through a certain sympathy. Or if the communication of good, which is beautifully imparted, is perverted by those that receive it to the contrary.