Thomas Taylor: Tratado 5,11 (V,9,11) — Há Formas dos produtos da técnica?

XI With respect, therefore, to things pertaining to the arts, and the arts themselves, the arts that are imitative, such as painting, statuary, dancing and pantomine, since they derive their subsistence from sensibles, and employ and imitate a sensible paradigm, and also transfer [to their originals] the forms, motions and symmetries which they perceive, cannot properly be referred to intelligibles, except so far as the forms in the human soul may be called intelligible. If any one, however, considers the habit in all animals arising from the symmetry of their formation, this will be a part of the power which in the intelligible world surveys and contemplates the symmetry of all things that are there. Moreover, with respect to all music which is conversant with harmony and rythm, so far as its conceptions are employed about rythm and harmony, it will subsist after the same manner as the music which is conversant with intelligible rythm. With respect to such arts as are productive of sensible things conformably to art, as the builder’s and the carpenter’s art, — these, so far as they employ symmetry, will derive their principles from intelligibles, and from the wisdom which is there. But as they mingle these with a sensible nature, the whole of them will not be in intelligibles, except so far as they subsist in man [i.e. in the human soul]. Neither will the agriculture be there which is conversant with a sensible plant; nor the medicine which surveys the health of the body, or which contributes to strength and a good corporeal habit. For there is another power, and another health there, through which all animals are sufficiently corroborated. With respect to rhetoric also, and the military art, economics, and the art pertaining to regal government, if some of these partake in actions of the beautiful, and make it the object of their contemplation, — in this case, they have a scientific allotment from the science which is there. But geometry, which is conversant with intelligibles, must be arranged in the intelligible world; as likewise must the highest wisdom which is conversant with real being. And thus much concerning the arts, and things pertaining to the arts.