is the end of the science of
dialectic, he is asked, What is the nature, and what are the divisions
of the science? He refuses to answer, as if intending by the refusal to
intimate that the state of knowledge which then existed was not such as
would allow the philosopher to enter into his final rest. The previous
sciences must first be studied, and will, we may add, continue to be
studied tell the end of time, although in a sense different from any
which Plato could have conceived. But we may observe, that while he is
aware of the vacancy of his own ideal, he is full of enthusiasm in the
contemplation of it. Looking into the orb of light, he sees nothing, but
he is warmed and elevated. The Hebrew prophet believed that faith in
God would enable him to govern the world; the Greek philosopher imagined
that contemplation of the good would make a legislator. There is as much
to be filled up in the one case as in the other, and the one mode of
conception is to the Israelite what the other is to the Greek. Both find
a repose in a divine perfection, which, whether in a more personal or
impersonal form, exists without them and independently of them, as well
as within them.

There is no mention of the idea of good in the Timaeus, nor of the
divine Creator of the world in the Republic; and we are naturally led
to ask in what relation they stand to one another. Is God above or below
the idea of good? Or is the Idea of Good another mode of conceiving God?
The latter appears to be the truer answer. To the Greek philosopher
the perfection and unity of God was a far higher conception than his
personality, which he hardly found a word to express, and which to him
would have seemed to be borrowed from mythology. To the Christian, on
the other hand, or to the modern thinker in general, it is difficult,
if not impossible, to attach reality to what he terms mere abstraction;
while to Plato this very abstraction is the truest and most real of all
things. Hence, from a difference in forms of thought, Plato appears to
be resting on a creation of his own mind only. But if we may be allowed
to paraphrase the idea of good by the words 'intelligent principle of
law and order in the universe, embracing equally man and nature,' we
begin to find a meeting-point between him and ourselves.

The question whether the ruler or statesman should be a philosopher is
one that has not lost interest in modern times. In most countries of
Europe and Asia there