the higher
nature of man evil is involuntary. This is mixed up with the view which,
while apparently agreeing with it, is in reality the opposite of it,
that vice is due to physical causes. In the Timaeus, as well as in the
Laws, he also regards vices and crimes as simply involuntary; they are
diseases analogous to the diseases of the body, and arising out of the
same causes. If we draw together the opposite poles of Plato's system,
we find that, like Spinoza, he combines idealism with fatalism.

The soul of man is divided by him into three parts, answering roughly
to the charioteer and steeds of the Phaedrus, and to the (Greek) of the
Republic and Nicomachean Ethics. First, there is the immortal nature
of which the brain is the seat, and which is akin to the soul of the
universe. This alone thinks and knows and is the ruler of the whole.
Secondly, there is the higher mortal soul which, though liable to
perturbations of her own, takes the side of reason against the lower
appetites. The seat of this is the heart, in which courage, anger, and
all the nobler affections are supposed to reside. There the veins all
meet; it is their centre or house of guard whence they carry the orders
of the thinking being to the extremities of his kingdom. There is also
a third or appetitive soul, which receives the commands of the immortal
part, not immediately but mediately, through the liver, which reflects
on its surface the admonitions and threats of the reason.

The liver is imagined by Plato to be a smooth and bright substance,
having a store of sweetness and also of bitterness, which reason freely
uses in the execution of her mandates. In this region, as ancient
superstition told, were to be found intimations of the future. But
Plato is careful to observe that although such knowledge is given to the
inferior parts of man, it requires to be interpreted by the superior.
Reason, and not enthusiasm, is the true guide of man; he is only
inspired when he is demented by some distemper or possession. The
ancient saying, that 'only a man in his senses can judge of his own
actions,' is approved by modern philosophy too. The same irony which
appears in Plato's remark, that 'the men of old time must surely have
known the gods who were their ancestors, and we should believe them as
custom requires,' is also manifest in his account of divination.

The appetitive soul is seated in the belly, and there imprisoned like
a wild beast, far away from