 Why does Plato burden himself and his readers with such a complex machinery and what does this heavenly instrument have to do with ethics? Since the human soul is formed from the same ingredients as the world soul (albeit in a less pure form), and displays the same structure (41d–e), Plato is clearly not just concerned with the order of the universe, but with that of the human soul as well. He attributes to it the possession of the kinds of concepts that are necessary for the understanding of the nature of all things, both eternal and temporal. The soul’s ingredients are here limited to the purely formal conditions, however. A theory of recollection of the nature of all things is no longer being advocated. Rather, Plato is concerned with ascertaining all of the following: (1) the most important concepts used to identify and differentiate objects in the way necessary for dialectical procedure; (2) the numbers and proportions needed to understand numerical relations and harmonic structures of all sorts; and (3) the capacity of the soul to perform and comprehend harmoniously coordinated motions. This, it seems, is all the soul gets and all it needs in order to perform its various tasks. The unusual depiction of the soul’s composition makes it hard, at first, to penetrate to the rationale of its construction, and it must remain an open question to what extent Plato expects his model to be taken in a literal rather than in a figurative sense. His overall message should be clear, however: the soul is a harmoniously structured entity, that can in principle function forever, and it also comprehends the corresponding structures in other entities, and therefore has access to all that is good and well-ordered. This last point has consequences for his ethical thought that are not developed in the Timaeus itself, but that can be detected in other late dialogues.