Part 2 / Book 10 — THE TIMÆUS. (continued 3)

LXXIII. Such is the process of generation in women and every female. Next succeeded the tribe of birds having feathers instead of hair, which were fashioned from men without vice indeed, but light-minded and curious about things on high, yet conceiving in their folly that the strongest proofs of these things are received through the sight [i. e. the senses]. Again, the race of wild animals with feet was generated from men, who made no use of philosophy, nor ever inquired into anything that concerned the nature of the universe,—and this, because they no longer employed the circulations in the head, but followed the guidance of those parts of the soul that reside about the breast. Owing to these pursuits, therefore, they fixed their fore-legs and head earthwards, as suited their nature,—having also long and variously-shaped heads, where the circulations of each were compressed by inactivity:—and hence their race became quadruped and multiped, the Deity giving a greater number of feet to those more than usually unwise, that they might be the more drawn towards the earth. But as regards the most unwise of these, which extend all their body along the ground, as if they had no longer any need for feet, the gods formed them without feet to creep on the earth. The fourth class is that living in the water, which was produced from such men as were to the last degree unthinking and ignorant, and whom those transformers of our nature did not think deserving of a pure medium of respiration, because they possessed a soul rendered impure by extreme transgression,—but drove them from the attenuated and pure atmosphere into the turbid and deep breathing-medium of 409water:—and hence arose the tribe of fishes and oysters, and all other aquatic animals, which have received the most remote habitations, as a punishment of their extreme ignorance. After this manner then, both formerly and now, animals migrate into each other; experiencing their changes through either the loss or acquisition of intellect and folly. We are now at length to say, that our discourse about the universe has reached its conclusion;—for not only containing, but full of mortal and immortal animals, it has thus been formed a visible animal embracing things visible, a sensible god of the intelligible, the greatest, best, and most perfect,—this one only-begotten UNIVERSE.

THE END OF THE TIMÆUS.

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