to the idea of good. He found them all
three, in the Pythagorean philosophy and in the teaching of Socrates and
of the Megarians respectively; and, because they all furnished modes of
explaining and arranging phenomena, he is unwilling to give up any of
them, though he is unable to unite them in a consistent whole.

Lastly, Plato, though an idealist philosopher, is Greek and not Oriental
in spirit and feeling. He is no mystic or ascetic; he is not seeking in
vain to get rid of matter or to find absorption in the divine nature, or
in the Soul of the universe. And therefore we are not surprised to find
that his philosophy in the Timaeus returns at last to a worship of the
heavens, and that to him, as to other Greeks, nature, though containing
a remnant of evil, is still glorious and divine. He takes away or drops
the veil of mythology, and presents her to us in what appears to him to
be the form-fairer and truer far--of mathematical figures. It is this
element in the Timaeus, no less than its affinity to certain Pythagorean
speculations, which gives it a character not wholly in accordance with
the other dialogues of Plato.

(b) The Timaeus contains an assertion perhaps more distinct than is
found in any of the other dialogues (Rep.; Laws) of the goodness of God.
'He was good himself, and he fashioned the good everywhere.' He was not
'a jealous God,' and therefore he desired that all other things should
be equally good. He is the IDEA of good who has now become a person, and
speaks and is spoken of as God. Yet his personality seems to appear only
in the act of creation. In so far as he works with his eye fixed upon an
eternal pattern he is like the human artificer in the Republic. Here the
theory of Platonic ideas intrudes upon us. God, like man, is supposed to
have an ideal of which Plato is unable to tell us the origin. He may be
said, in the language of modern philosophy, to resolve the divine mind
into subject and object.

The first work of creation is perfected, the second begins under the
direction of inferior ministers. The supreme God is withdrawn from
the world and returns to his own accustomed nature (Tim.). As in the
Statesman, he retires to his place of view. So early did the Epicurean
doctrine take possession of the Greek mind, and so natural is it to the
heart of man, when he has once passed out of the stage of mythology into
that of rational religion. For he sees the marks of design in the world;
but he no