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)