f
another world, where each man is rewarded according to his works. And
the book closes with a magnificent Vision of Judgment. It is the story
of Er, son of Armenius, who being wounded in battle, after twelve days'
trance comes back to life, and tells of the judgment seat, of heavenly
bliss and hellish punishments, and of the renewal of life and the new
choice given to souls not yet purified wholly of sin. "God is
blameless; Man's Soul is immortal; Justice and Truth are the only
things eternally good." Such is the final revelation.

The _Timaeus_ is an attempt by Plato, under the guise of a Pythagorean
philosopher, to image forth as in a vision or dream the actual framing
of the universe, conceived as a realisation of the Eternal Thought or
Idea. It will be remembered that in the analysis already given (p.
143) of the process of knowledge in individual men, Plato found that
prior to the suggestions of the senses, though not coming into
consciousness except in connection with sensation, men had _ideas_ that
gave them a power of rendering their sensations intelligible. In the
_Timaeus_ Plato attempts a vision of the universe as though he saw
{151} it working itself into actuality on the lines of those ideas.
The vision is briefly as follows: There is the Eternal Creator, who
desired to make the world because He was good and free from jealousy,
and therefore willed that all things should be like Himself; that is,
that the formless, chaotic, unrealised void might receive form and
order, and become, in short, real as He was. Thus creation is the
process by which the Eternal Creator works out His own image, His own
ideas, in and through that which is formless, that which has no name,
which is nothing but possibility,--dead earth, namely, or _Matter_.
And first the world-soul, image of the divine, is formed, on which as
on a "diamond network" the manifold structure of things is
fashioned--the stars, the seven planets with their sphere-music, the
four elements, and all the various creatures, aetherial or fiery,
aerial, aqueous, and earthy, with the consummation of them all in
microcosm, in the animal world, and specially in man.

One can easily see that this is an attempt by Plato to carry out the
reverse process in thought to that which first comes to thinking man.
Man has sensations, that is, he comes first upon that which is
conceivably last in creation, on the immediate and temporary things or
momentary occurrences