witness given by history to the teaching of the Catholic Church. That such doctrines were taught by it as Apostolic, is an external fact cognizible by the senses, not calculated by the reason. If this appeal to the senses failed, Plato then fell back on human authority, on the testimony of parents, teachers, and legislators, of all mankind-a testimony in itself a proof that the fact which it witnessed was not a mere human opinion, not subjective. "Study the truth," he says to the young Atheist : Tvνðανόμενος παρά τε τῶν ἄλλων, καὶ δὴ καὶ μάλιστα καὶ παρὰ τοῦ νομοθέτου. And in the mean time, as Bishop Butler says to the Deist, ἐν δὲ τούτῳ τῷ χρόνῳ μὴ τολμήσῃς περὶ θεοὺς μηδὲν ἀσεβῆσαι. But the whole passage should be referred to, and studied with profound attention, as a chapter against Atheism. And thus far for the existence of a God. 1 De Legib. vol. vi. lib. x. p. 361. сс CHAPTER XXXVI. BUT for the character and attributes of the Divine Being, Plato was obliged to search elsewhere. No Church had been preserved in his own country to keep up the knowledge of these truths or ideas. In Egypt, indeed, a Church still existed; in Italy Pythagoras had founded another, and confided to it the mysterious knowledge, which he had received from the East, whether doctrines as founded on tradition, or dogmas as opinions of men. And to these Plato did undoubtedly look back with a profound reverence and confidence. But whatever was the belief of his heart, he required something more to prove the objectiveness of the theological truths contained in Orientalism and Pythagoreism. There had, indeed, been a primitive revelation, and Plato believed it, and, so far as it might be traced, he enforced implicit obedience to it. Hence his reverence for hereditary forms of worship 1—his earnest recognition of God as the author of laws and of society; "Was it from a God or from a man that laws first emanated?” Оɛòç, ☎ ¿évɛ, Oɛòç 2—his view of the progress of society, as a declension, not an elevation 3. Hence it is that his last days, as being farthest from the light, are like those of the Apostle, and described almost in the same words 1, when 66 men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without 2 1 The Laws. 3 2 Laws, vol. vi. lib. i. p. 1. natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God." And his picture of the early days, is of days of bright heroic deeds, when the sons of God, Kyovoι Oεv2, were still upon earth, knowing and declaring to men the nature of God as of their parent,—σαφῶς που τοὺς αὑτῶν προγόνους eidooiv,-whose declarations we are bound to receive, though they speak without any demonstration, even without probable proof,-to receive as from men, who speak of things, which they have seen and heard in the bosom of their homes: ἀδύνατον οὖν θεῶν παισὶν ἀπιστεῖν καίπερ ἄνευ τε εἰκότων καὶ ἀναγκαίων ἀποδείξεων λέγουσι, ἀλλ' ὡς οἰκεῖα φάσκουσιν ἀπαγγέλλειν, ἑπομένους τῷ νόμῳ πιστευτέον. But with all this reverence for tradition, Plato knew that the tradition before him was corrupt, too corrupt to be taken as a standard of the primitive external revelation. He felt to it as a pious Roman Catholic might feel to the corrupt traditions of his own Church, which, inasmuch as they are corrupt are no traditions at all, but doctrines invented by man and not received from God. They contained truths generally recognized, but truths mixed with strongest suspicions of falsifications, and unsupported by the witness of Catholicity, that is, of many independent Churches radiating from the common centre of an apostolical body, and preserving separately one common form of unchanged traditionary doctrine. In the absence of this Catholicity, Plato was compelled to look elsewhere for his objective truths relative to the Divine Nature. And he found them in the unvarying immutable principles of the human mind. 1 See Timæus, vol. vii. p. 12; Critias, vol. vii. p. 128. 2 Timæus, vol. vii. p. 30. The first forms or idéal of the Deity he fixes in the Republic, and in the Laws 2,-Power, Wisdom, Goodness, Immutability, Truth, Providence. He found them essentially and inseparably connected in the first elements of human reason. He could not conceive power, without somewhere or another Supreme Power,-nor Supreme Power with any mixture of evil, for evil in the heart of man always implies weakness, temptation, defect,- -nor power in matter without its emanating from a power in mind, because mind is greater than matter, and the less must be created by the greater, not the greater by the less,nor power in mind without wisdom,-nor original supreme power without immutability,-nor power, wisdom, and goodness without truth-nor all these combined in God, without a wish to diffuse his blessings to make others like to himself, and to watch over them when made: d'ya¤òs ñv3. άya0u̟ dè οὐδεὶς περὶ οὐδενὸς οὐδέποτε ἐγγίγνεται φθόνος· τούτου δ ̓ ἐκτὸς ὢν, πάντα ὅτι μάλιστα ἐβουλήθη γενέσθαι παραπλήσια αὑτῷ. Hence the creation of the world : ταύτην δὲ γενέσεως κόσμου μάλιστ ̓ ἄν τις ἀρχὴν κυριωτάτην παρ' ἀνδρῶν φρονίμων ἀποδεχόμενος, ὀρθότατα ἀποδέ χοιτ ̓ ἄνε. The chain, which binds together these attributes, is imbedded deeply and immoveably in the human mind, as in a solid rock. No effort of reason can dissever them. We may try to fracture the links, as we may try to conceive the same thing to be and not to be. But we are thrown back baffled and overcome by a Power beyond us,-the Power which framed the mind at first, and stands like a wall of adamant against us, whenever we would presume to pass the barriers which He has erected. And thus though as 1 Lib. ii. 3 Timæus, vol. vii. p. 18. 2 Lib. x. 4 Timæus, ibidem. forms of our conceptions they are subjective, wholly subjective, just as the sensation of resistance to the touch, and of heat from burning, are subjective; yet they are objective, inasmuch as they form no part of our own will or reason, are unalterable by ourselves, are obstacles to our efforts of thought, resist us, do not coincide with us. They are as much proofs of a power beyond us, and therefore of a will beyond us, as solidity is of the existence of body, of something which we cannot displace. And yet even in these, the primary truths of reason,-all of them ostensibly reducible under the one great axiom of demonstration, "whatever is, is," and under the one great principle of morals, that "goodness is power, and vice weakness," and under the one great principle of mind, "that it requires for its full perfection an object like to itself,"—even in these Plato did not dare to trust to the subjective logical power, or what men call reason (as if reason was only calculation by which the links in the chain are evolved), and though with the line of demonstration before him, he referred to an external authority: παρ' ἀνδρῶν φρονίμων αποδε χόμενος. But were these then all the forms, attributes, or idéaɩ, which Plato recognized in the Divine Mind? Assuredly not. Plato had a more definite creed-a sanctuary in this temple of truth beyond that vast vaulted nave, into which all mankind might be admitted, who were capable of exercising reason. The real essence of the Divine nature, it is hard, he says, to discover, and, when discovered, impossible to explain to all: τὸν μὲν οὖν ποιητὴν καὶ πατέρα τοῦδε τοῦ παντὸς εὑρεῖν τε ἔργον, καὶ εὑρόντα, εἰς πάντας αδύνατον λέγειν '. Again, "Tell us," says Glaucon, "the road to that knowledge, the highest 1 Timæus, vol. vii. p. 17. |