ABSTRACT
This conclusion is unquestionably consistent with what Plato actually says. Again and again, throughout the Timaeus, we are told that the benevolent Demiurge designed that such and such an arrangement should be ' as good as possible ' , with the clear implication that his purpose was restricted by that other factor called Necessity. We must accept this, on pain of reducing much of his language to nonsense. There is nothing against it, except the desire to bring Plato into conformity with Christian doctrine or
these confer upon the cosmos, first contemplates the whole bGdily frame by itself in its disharmony and disorder, so that you may see also by itself the order due to soul and to the disposition of the creator, and distinguish the nature of the bodily in itself from the nature of the created order. The cosmos itself exists everlastingly; but the discourse distinguishes that which becomes from its maker and introduces in temporal order things that coexist simultaneously, because whatsoever is generated is composite.'
