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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 June 2022
What does he mean by the first generation of the soul? Since the soul is a plurality and the first of the things that are composite, it has been put together not from an infinite number, but out of [parts that have] a definite number. And since these things are not ill proportioned but rather have been harmonised, numbers and harmony have been plausibly assumed in its generation. But since it includes as well all the first principles of all proportion and all harmony – this being the soul of the cosmos – not a single proportion has been left out. Because the compos ite is divine, the more divine of the kinds [of harmony] was assumed, i.e. the diatonic, for this [harmonic system] is inspired. Because Being, Sameness and Difference have all been assumed from the start, the soul has been established as a whole prior to the parts, but now through the generation of the soul we have the whole in the parts. For the Demiurge has divided and unified it through proportions, and through the circles he has provided for the wholeness of the parts in each one. It must also be accepted that the Demiurge in the Timaeus acts in conjunction with all the other creators, for he divides [the Circle of the Same] into seven in the manner of the Titans and unifies things in a manner that is Apollonian. In as much as he has the character of Hephaestus, he forges and shapes bodies, while he demarcates the patterns of risings and settings [among the heavenly bodies] and has written the laws of fate in as much as he has the character of Necessity.
Since it is necessary for <the things> in the generation of the soul to have a point (skopos), what is said must be referred either to the soul's essence or to the things that are administered by it. Or, if possible, they should be referred to both, for the things in the cosmos are due to those things that subsist in the soul in an essential way (kat’ ousian).
It is necessary to inquire into what the means are, what multiples are, what a super-particular ratio is and what a super-partient ratio is, what the semi-tone is, what the seven portions are [in the division of the Circle of the Different].
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