Tim.).

The Timaeus, which takes up the political rather than the ethical side of the Republic, and is chiefly occupied with hypotheses concerning the outward world, yet contains many indications that the same law is supposed to reign over the State, over nature, and over man.
Too much, however, has been made of this question both in ancient and modern times.

There is a stage of criticism in which all works, whether of nature or of art, are referred to design.

Now in ancient writings, and indeed in literature generally, there remains often a large element which was not comprehended in the original design.

For the plan grows under the author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end before he begins.
The reader who seeks to find some one idea under which the whole may be conceived, must necessarily seize on the vaguest and most general.