Plútarchos z Chaironeie; Platonicae quaestiones

   

   QUESTION II

   Whyever did  he call the supreme god father and maker of all things? Was it because he is of
   gods, the gods that are engendered, and of men father, as Homer names him, but maker of
   irrational beings and of inanimate things? For not even of the placenta, says Chrysippus,
   though it is a product of the seed, is he who provided the seed called father. Or is it by his
   customary use of metaphor that he has called him who is responsible for the universe its
   father? So in the Symposium he called Phaedrus father of the amatory discourses because he was
   instigator of them and in the dialogue that bears his name  called him blessed with fair
   children because as a result of his initiative philosophy had been filled with many fair
   discourses. Or is there a difference between father and maker and between birth  and coming to
   be? For as what has been born has ipso facto come to be but not contrariwise so it is that he
   who has begotten has ipso facto made, for birth is the coming to be of an animate thing. Also
   in the case of a maker, such as a builder is or a weaver or one who produces a lyre or a
   statue, his work when done is separated from him, whereas the principle or force emanating
   from the parent is blended in the progeny and cohibits its nature, which is a fragment or part
   of the procreator. Since, then, the universe is not like products that have been moulded or
   fitted together but has in it a large portion of vitality and divinity, which god sowed from
   himself in the matter and mixed with it, it is reasonable that, since the universe has come
   into being a living thing, god be named at the same time father of it and maker.

   While this most nearly coincides with Plato's opinion, consider whether there will be
   plausibility in the following statement also: There are two constituent parts of the universe,
   body and soul. The former god did not beget; but, matter having submitted itself to him, he
   formed and fitted it together by binding and bounding the unlimited with suitable limits and
   shapes. The soul, however, when it has partaken of intelligence and reason and concord, is not
   merely a work but also a part of god and has come to be not by his agency but both from him as
   source and out of his substance.

   

   Transl. by Harold Cherniss (Plutarch: Moralia; Vol. XIII, part. I; Harvard University Press;
   Loeb Classical Library 2000)