to foretell that which indeed they do but collect. As that of Seneca's verse. For so much was then subject to demonstration, that the globe of the earth had great parts beyond the Atlantic, which mought be probably conceived not to be all sea: and adding thereto the tradition in Plato's Timæus,[1] and his Atlanticus, it mought encourage one to turn it to a prediction. The third and last (which is the great one) is, that almost all of them, being infinite in number, have been impostures, and by idle and crafty brains merely contrived and feigned after the event past.
XXXVI. Of Ambition.
Ambition is like choler; which is an humour that maketh men active, earnest, full of alacrity, and stirring, if it be not stopped. But if it be stopped, and cannot have his way, it becometh
- ↑ Of the Dialogues of Plato, the Republic, Timaeus, and Critias were meant to form a trilogy. The interlocutors of Timaeus are Socrates, Critias, Timaeus the Pythagorean philosopher, and Hermocrates. Critias begins the main line of thought by recalling some of the myths of ancient Athens, and then proposes to regard the ideal state of Socrates in the Republic as this ancient Athenian state. Timaeus is to carry on the discourse with the history of creation down to the birth of mankind, when Critias will make a further application of the story to the ideal Republic. The third dialogue, Critias, is but a fragment relating the legend of prehistoric Athens and Atlantis. In Timaeus and Critias Atlantis is a mythical island somewhere northwest of Africa, which, with its inhabitants, disappeared in a convulsion of nature. Bacon calls the dialogue Critias, 'Atlanticus.'
