l
fashion, of this perfect Beauty, because we had seen it once before in
another life, before our souls were born into this world, 'that blissful
sight and spectacle' (_Phaedrus_, 250 B) when we followed Zeus in his
winged car and all the company of the gods, and went out into the realm
beyond the sky, a realm 'of which no mortal poet has ever sung or ever
will sing worthily'.

3. But, beside this passion for the ideal, Plato was intensely
interested in our knowledge of the actual world of appearances around
us. And one of the prime questions with which he was then concerned was
the question, what we mean when we talk about the nature or character
of the things we see, a plant, say, or an animal, or a man. We must mean
something definite, otherwise we could not recognize, for example, that
a plant _is_ a plant through all its varieties and all the different
stages of its growth. Plato's answer was, that in all natural things
there is a definite principle that copies, as it were, a definite Type
or Form, and this Type he calls an Idea. Thus in some sense it is this
Type, this Idea, this Form, that brings the particular thing into being.

4. But it was not enough for Plato to say that every natural thing had
in some sense a certain type for its basis, unless he could believe that
this type was good, and that all the types were harmonious with each
other. He could only be satisfied with the world, in short, if he could
feel that it came about through a movement towards perfection. He makes
his Socrates say that in asking about 'the causes of things, what it is
that makes each thing come into being', it was not enough for him if he
could only see that the thing was there because something had put it
there: he also wanted to see that it was good for it to be there.
Socrates tells us that what he needed he thought he had found in a book
by Anaxagoras, which announced 'that Mind was the disposer and cause of
all' because, 'I said to myself, If this be so--if Mind is the orderer,
it will have all in order, and put every single thing in the place that
is best for it'.[8]

It is the same feeling as that which underlies the words of Genesis
about the Creation, 'And God saw that it was good'. And there is no
doubt that such a view of the world would be supremely satisfying if we
could count it true. There may be considerable intellectual
satisfaction, no doubt, in merely solving a puzzle as to how things come
about, but it is as