Christianity and Greek Philosophy / or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles

by B. F. Cocker

[Footnote 631: ][ (return) ] "Republic," bk. vi. ch. xix.

[Footnote 632: ][ (return) ] "Laws," bk. iv. ch. viii.

[Footnote 633: ][ (return) ] "Republic," bk. ii. ch. xxi.

[Footnote 634: ][ (return) ] "Laws," bk. iv. ch. vii.

[Footnote 635: ][ (return) ] "Philebus," § 51; "Timæus," ch. x.

[Footnote 636: ][ (return) ] "Republic," bk. ii. ch. xviii.; "Timæus," ch. x.

[Footnote 637: ][ (return) ] "Laws," bk. iv, ch. vii.

Beyond the sensible world, Plato conceived another world of intelligibles or ideas. These ideas are not, however, distinct and independent existences. "What general notions are to our own minds, ideas are to the Supreme Reason (νοῦς ßασιλεύς); they are the eternal thoughts of the Divine Intellect." [⁶³⁸] Ideas are not substances, they are qualities, and there must, therefore, be some ultimate substance or being to whom, as attributes, they belong. "It must not be believed, as has been taught, that Plato gave to ideas a substantial existence. When they are not objects of pure conception for human reason, they are attributes of the Divine Reason. It is there they substantially exist." [⁶³⁹] These eternal laws and reasons of things indicate to us the character of that Supreme Essence of essences, the Being of beings. He is not the simple aggregate of all laws, but he is the Author, and Sustainer, and Substance of all laws. At the utmost summit of the intellectual world of Ideas blazes, with an eternal splendor, the idea of the Supreme Good from which all others emanate. [⁶⁴⁰] This Supreme Good is "far beyond all existence in dignity and power, and it is that from which all things else derive their being and essence." [⁶⁴¹] The Supreme Good is not the truth, nor the intelligence; "it is the Father of it." In the same manner as the sun, which is the visible image of the good, reigns over the world, in that it illumes and vivifies it; so the Supreme Good, of which the sun is only the work, reigns over the intelligible world, in that it gives birth to it by virtue of its inexhaustible fruitfulness. [⁶⁴²] The Supreme Good is GOD himself, and he is designated "the good" because this term seems most fittingly to express his essential character and essence. [⁶⁴³] It is towards this superlative perfection that the reason lifts itself; it is towards this infinite beauty the heart aspires. "Marvellous Beauty!" exclaims Plato; "eternal, uncreated, imperishable beauty, free from increase and diminution... beauty which has nothing sensible, nothing corporeal, as hands or face: which does not reside in any being different from itself, in the earth, or the heavens, or in any other thing, but which exists eternally and absolutely in itself, and by itself; beauty of which every other beauty partakes, without their birth or destruction bringing to it the least increase or diminution." [⁶⁴⁴] The absolute being--God, is the last reason, the ultimate foundation, the complete ideal of all beauty. God is, par excellent, the Beautiful.

[Footnote 638: ][ (return) ] Thompson's "Laws of Thought," p. 119.

[Footnote 639: ][ (return) ] Cousin, "Lectures on the History of Philosophy," vol. i. p. 415. "There is no quintessential metaphysics which can prevail against common sense, and if such be the Platonic theory of ideas, Aristotle was right in opposing it. But such a theory is only a chimera which Aristotle created for the purpose of combating it."--"The True, the Beautiful, and the Good," p. 77.