The problem of existence still waits for and demands a solution. The heart of man, also, still cries out for the living God. The Socratic maxim, "know thyself," introverts the mental gaze, and self-reflection now becomes the method of philosophy. The Platonic analysis of thought reveals elements of knowledge which are not derived from the outer world. There are universal and necessary principles revealed in consciousness which, in their natural and logical development, transcend consciousness, and furnish the cognition of a world of Real Being, beyond the world of sense. There are absolute truths which bridge the chasm between the seen and the unseen, the fleeting and the permanent, the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal. There are necessary laws of thought which are also found to be laws of things, and which correlate man to a living, personal, righteous Lord and Lawgiver. From absolute ideas Plato ascends to an absolute Being, the author of all finite existence. From absolute truths to an absolute Reason, the foundation and essence of all truth. From the principle of immutable right to an absolutely righteous Being. From the necessary idea of the good to a being of absolute Goodness--that is, to God. This is the maturity of humanity, the ripening manhood of our race which was attained in the Socratic age.
The inevitable tendency of this effort of speculative thought, spread over ages, and of the intellectual culture which necessarily resulted, was to undermine the old polytheistic religion, and to purify and elevate the theistic conception. The school of Elea rejected the gross anthropomorphism of the Homeric theology. Xenophanes, the founder of the school, was a believer in
" One God, of all beings divine and human the greatest,
Neither in body alike unto mortals, neither in ideas."
And he repels with indignation the anthropomorphic representations of the Deity.
"But men foolishly think that gods are born as men are,
And have, too, a dress like their own, and their voice, and their figure:
But if oxen and lions had hands like ours, and fingers,
Then would horses like unto horses, and oxen to oxen,
Paint and fashion their god-forms, and give to them bodies