[Footnote 193: ][ (return) ] See chap. xi.
[Footnote 194: ][ (return) ] Some writers have supposed that Plato must have had access through some medium to "the Oracles of God." See Butler, vol. ii. p. 41.
And, now that we have in Plato the culmination of Grecian speculative thought, we may learn from him the mature and final judgment of the ancients in regard to the gods of pagan mythology. We open the Timæus, and here we find his views most definitely expressed. After giving an account of the "generation" of the sun, and moon, and planets, which are by him designated as "visible gods," he then proceeds "to speak concerning the other divinities:" "We must on this subject assent to those who in former times have spoken thereon; who were, as they said, the offspring of the gods, and who doubtless were well acquainted with their own ancestors..... Let then the genealogy of the gods be, and be acknowledged to be, that which they deliver. Of Earth and Heaven the children were Oceanus and Tethys; and of these the children were Phorcys, and Kronos, and Rhea, and all that followed these; and from these were born Zeus and Hera, and those who are regarded as brothers and sisters of these, and others their offspring. "When, then, all the gods were brought into existence, both those which move around in manifest courses [the stars and planets], and those which appear when it pleases them [the mythological deities], the Creator of the Universe thus addressed them:
'Gods, and sons of gods, of whom I am the father and the author, produced by me, ye are indestructible because I will.... Now inasmuch as you have been generated, you are hence not immortal, nor wholly indissoluble; yet you shall never be dissolved nor become subject to the fatality of death, because so I have willed.... Learn, therefore, my commands. Three races of mortals yet remain to be created. Unless these be created, the universe will be imperfect, for it will not contain within it every kind of animal.... In order that these mortal creatures may be, and that this world may be really a cosmos, do you apply yourselves to the creation of animals, imitating the exercises of my power in creating you.'" [195]
[Footnote 195: ][ (return) ] "Timæus," ch. xv.
Here, then, we see that Plato carefully distinguishes between the sole Eternal Author of the universe, on one hand, and the "souls," vital and intelligent, which he attaches to the heavenly orbs, and diffuses through all nature, on the other. These subordinate powers or agents are all created, "generated deities," who owe their continued existence to the will of God; and though intrusted with a sort of deputed creation, and a subsequent direction and government of created things, they are still only the servants and the deputies of the Supreme Creator, and Director, and Ruler of all things. These subordinate agents and ministers employed in the creation and providential government of the world appear, in the estimation of Plato, to have been needed--
1. To satisfy the demands of the popular faith, which presented its facts to be explained no less than those of external nature. Plato had evidently a great veneration for antiquity, a peculiar regard for "tradition venerable through ancient report," and "doctrines hoary with years." [196] He aspired after supernatural light and guidance; he longed for some intercourse with, some communication from, the Deity. And whilst he found many things in the ancient legends which revolted his moral sense, and which his reason rejected, yet the sentiment and the lesson which pervades the whole of Grecian mythology, viz., that the gods are in ceaseless intercourse with the human race, and if men will do right the gods will protect and help them, was one which commended itself to his heart.
[Footnote 196: ][ (return) ] Ibid., ch. v.
2. These intermediate agents seem to have been demanded to satisfy the disposition and tendency which has revealed itself in all systems, of interposing some scale of ascent between the material creation and the infinite Creator.
The mechanical theory of the universe has interposed its long series of secondary causes--the qualities, properties, laws, forces of nature; the vital theory which attaches a separate "soul" to the various parts of nature as the cause and intelligent director of its movements. Of these "souls" or gods, there were different orders and degrees--deified men or heroes, aërial, terrestrial, and celestial divinities, ascending from nature up to God. And this tendency to supply some scale of ascent towards the Deity, or at least to people the vast territory which seems to swell between the world and God, finds some countenance in "the angels and archangels," "the thrones, and dominions, and principalities, and powers" of the Christian scriptures. [197]