ed he purged the mind of secret
corruption. But if there be any knowledge of the truth, and if the truth
be one, he has as much that learns it of him that invented it, as the
inventor himself. Now he the most easily attains the truth, that is
persuaded he has it not; and he chooses best, just as he that has
no children of his own adopts the best. Mark this well, that poetry,
mathematics, oratory, and sophistry, which are the things the Deity
forbade Socrates to generate, are of no value; and that of the sole
wisdom about what is divine and intelligible (which Socrates called
amiable and eligible for itself), there is neither generation nor
invention by man, but reminiscence. Wherefore Socrates taught nothing,
but suggesting principles of doubt, as birth-pains, to young men, he
excited and at the same time confirmed the innate notions. This he
called his Art of Midwifery, which did not (as others professed)
extrinsically confer intelligence upon his auditors; but demonstrated it
to be innate, yet imperfect and confused, and in want of a nurse to feed
and fortify it.

QUESTION II. WHY DOES HE CALL THE SUPREME GOD FATHER AND MAKER OF ALL
THINGS? (Plato, "Timaeus," p. 28 C.)

Is it because he is (as Homer calls him) of created gods and men
the Father, and of brutes and things that have no soul the maker? If
Chrysippus may be believed, he is not properly styled the father of the
afterbirth who supplied the seed, although it arose from the seed. Or
has Plato figuratively called the maker of the world the father of
it? In his Convivium he calls Phaedrus the father of the amatorious
discourse which he had commenced; and so in his Phaedrus ("Phaedrus,"
p. 261 A.) he calls him "father of noble children," when he had been the
occasion of many pre-eminent discourses about philosophical questions.
Or is there any difference between a father and a maker? Or between
procreation and making? For as what is procreated is also made, but not
the contrary recreated did also make, for the procreation of an animal
is the making of it. Now the work of a maker--as of a builder, a weaver,
a musical-instrument maker, or a statuary--is altogether apart and
separate from its author; but the principle and power of the procreator
is implanted in the progeny, and contains his nature, the progeny being
a piece pulled off the procreator. Since therefore the world is neither
like a piece of potter's work nor joiner's work, but there is a great
shar