Matter was the relatively passive ingredient in the process of creation. The active power was the Supreme Intelligence, or Highest Good, whom it is almost im- possible to apprehend, and impossible to declare (Ti- mceus. p. 29). He is the efficient cause of all things; the fountain of all pure, spiritual, perfect, and sell-sup- porting existences; the founder and ultimate fabricator of everything. He is incorporeal reason, self-existent, eternally the same, withoul beginning, without end. hav- ing no affinity with things of sense, and apprehensible only by the pure intellect. He is all-wise, all-seeing, all-foreseeing, all-mighty, except so far as restricted by the intractability of matter. He has absolute freedom of will, is supremely good. and. being good, is void of envy and malevolence. Hence everything made by him is good, so far as the repugnance of matter will permit. He framed the world in all possible excellence after the eternal image in his own mind. This uncre- ated and unbeginning idea of the universe (Xoyoc or Xoyiafioc tov Hair) has been regarded as a third co- eternal principle. This exemplar included the patterns or ideas of all created things; everything in the sen- sible universe being fashioned according to its corre- sponding type in the intelligible universe, or world of ideas. The doctrine seems to have been deduced from Pythagoras, but was applied by Plato in his own man- ner; and never more beautifully nor more character- istically than in his celebrated fancy of a cave where all that men saw or heard consisted of shadows and echoes (De Rep. vii, p. 514-519). The imperfect things of earth were thus the obscure, fleeting images of the perfect forms of the divine contemplation. It is mi-
PLATONIC PIIIL<»opIIY
PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY"
certain whether Plato attributed to these ideas a Bub- propagated along the great axis "the music of the Btantive existence ol their ow n, si parate from and inde- Bpheres" to the earth, which was the fixed and middle of the divine mind, or supposed them to l"- orb (Di Rep. x, p. 617). The earth was occupied by ani- riroply the immanent, changeless thoughts of the God- mala and other things created by the subordinate demi- i'et thouwh God is distinctly and habitually urgi, to whom wa« also intrusted the creation of man. acknowledged as the father and creator of all things, But man. as the noblest of animals, was no) left wholly all things were not directly framed and regulated by t<> their handiwork. Immortal souls, numerous as the tin- Supreme Divinity. For the government of the stars, were supplied by the Supreme Intelligence, to be scn-iU<- universe he created a subordinate deity, and provided with terrestrial bodies. These souls were nei- placed ii in the material creation (Timaus, p. 34 I. This ther emanations nor spirations, but true creations. They guiding spirit, or Demiurgus, was a mixture of the ideal wen- to guide and govern the material vessels in which and of the material, "f ilt< <"" and <■!' the many, that, they should Ik- confined, as the superior spirit- guided being intermediate, ii might communicate with both, and governed the worlds which they controlled. The This was the Anima Mundi. which assumed such prom- matter with which they were united exposed them to inence in the theological and physical speculations of contamination, to failure, and to sin. From the strug- the Stoics. Ii maintained the regular operations of gle '-within the union" results moral evil, or disobe- the laws of temporal change, and by its plastic energy dience to the laws of ideal perfection, which are in con- moulded into appropriate form- all the multitudinous formity with the purposes of God. In their earthly manifestations of transitory being (to yiyvopivov) condition, human souls were subjected to the general (Cratylus, p. 53 . 'aws "' ""' universe, hut were endowed with an unde- ll,,. B0U] 0f il„. universe was not the sole created lined freedom of will through their heavenly COHStitu- divinitv. Divine spirits were apportioned to the earth, tion. Happiness resulted from obedience to the impulses Bun, moon, and stars, to govern their developments and of the better nature, and to the order and economy of
to preside over their motions i />■ Legg. p. 899). Hosts of still inferior deifies were assigned ther appro- priate functions. Thus, with a line and half-suppressed irony, provision was made tor the national gods, and for the 30,000 unnamed divinities attested by Hesiod. To these deities, each in his due place in the vast hie- rarchy, was ascribed the duty of forming men. animals of lower order, plants, etc.. and of watching over them. In the subordinate ranks of the celestial army were a countless multitude of sprites, who were cousin-german to i he sylphs, gnomes, fairies, and other trihes of -little people," and to whom immortality was denied.
•_'. Physics Proper. The second branch of contem- plative philosophy is occupied with the consideration of the order of nature as the product of the acts of crea- tion. Nothing exists or arises without cause. Hence ile Aristotelian maxim vert scin est scire l„ r cavsas; for the cause affords the ratio essendi, or explanation of the existence of the object investigated
tin- intelligible world.
It would take t nuch space, ami prove too tedious,
to enter into the physiology propounded by Plato; and nothing could he gained (nun the presentation of his views hut the < shibition of Platonic fantasy. We pass