The unseen world, how does the soul know things? The soul consists of identity, otherness, and substance. While rotating, it informs whether something touched is the same or different, and how it exists and functions.

When that silent expression turns towards sensory experiences, certain assumptions and beliefs are formed. When it turns towards rational things, intellect and knowledge are born.

Dialogue Text

Timaios (Continued) Thus, the body of heaven became visible, and the soul became invisible. However, the soul, being attuned to reason and harmony, and existing under a constant intellectual object, became the most excellent thing among generated things. The soul is mixed from three parts: identity, otherness, and substance, and it is divided and combined in proportion. And as the soul rotates around itself, when it touches something that has divisible substances, or something that does not have divisible substances, it announces whether they are identical or different through movement throughout its entirety.

Timaios (Continued) The soul reveals how each thing exists in relation to others, to what extent, and in what manner, as well as when it exists and acts or is acted upon. It also reveals things that maintain the same state consistently.

Timaios (Continued) Regarding what is the same and what is different, the discourse that arises within the soul proceeds without voice or sound, driven by the soul itself. When it concerns something perceived, and a circle of otherness advances straightly to inform the entire soul, then certain and true beliefs are born.

Timaios (Continued) However, when this arises concerning rational things, and the circle of identity rotates well to indicate it, then intellect and understanding inevitably arise. And if someone were to say that what gives rise to these two is something other than the soul, then they would be speaking something far removed from truth.