ous aspects of the
Ideas were doubtless indicated to Plato's own mind, as the corresponding
theological problems are to us. The immanence of things in the Ideas, or
the partial separation of them, and the self-motion of the supreme
Idea, are probably the forms in which he would have interpreted his own
parable.

He touches upon another question of great interest--the consciousness of
evil--what in the Jewish Scriptures is called 'eating of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil.' At the end of the narrative, the Eleatic
asks his companion whether this life of innocence, or that which men
live at present, is the better of the two. He wants to distinguish
between the mere animal life of innocence, the 'city of pigs,' as it
is comically termed by Glaucon in the Republic, and the higher life of
reason and philosophy. But as no one can determine the state of man
in the world before the Fall, 'the question must remain unanswered.'
Similar questions have occupied the minds of theologians in later ages;
but they can hardly be said to have found an answer. Professor Campbell
well observes, that the general spirit of the myth may be summed up in
the words of the Lysis: 'If evil were to perish, should we hunger any
more, or thirst any more, or have any similar sensations? Yet perhaps
the question what will or will not be is a foolish one, for who can
tell?' As in the Theaetetus, evil is supposed to continue,--here, as the
consequence of a former state of the world, a sort of mephitic vapour
exhaling from some ancient chaos,--there, as involved in the possibility
of good, and incident to the mixed state of man.

Once more--and this is the point of connexion with the rest of the
dialogue--the myth is intended to bring out the difference between the
ideal and the actual state of man. In all ages of the world men have
dreamed of a state of perfection, which has been, and is to be, but
never is, and seems to disappear under the necessary conditions of human
society. The uselessness, the danger, the true value of such political
ideals have often been discussed; youth is too ready to believe in
them; age to disparage them. Plato's 'prudens quaestio' respecting the
comparative happiness of men in this and in a former cycle of existence
is intended to elicit this contrast between the golden age and 'the
life under Zeus' which is our own. To confuse the divine and human, or
hastily apply one to the other, is a 'tremendous error.' Of th