[375] Plato, Timæus, pp. 44 B, 47 C.
Argument of Plato to confute the second class of heretics.
Having demonstrated to his own full satisfaction, from the regularity of the celestial rotations, that the heavenly bodies are wise and good Gods, and that all things are full of Gods — Plato applies this conclusion to refute the second class of heretics — those who did not believe that the Gods directed all human affairs, the small things as well as the great;[376] that is, the lot of each individual person as well as that of the species or of its component aggregates. He himself affirms that they direct all things. It is inconsistent with their attributes of perfect intelligence, power, and goodness (he maintains) that they should leave anything, either small or great, without regulation. All good human administrators, generals, physicians, pilots, &c., regulate all things, small and great, in their respective provinces: the Gods cannot be inferior to them, and must be held to do the same. They regulate every thing with a view to the happiness of the whole, in which each man has his share and interest; and each man has his special controuling Deity watching over his minutest proceedings, whether the individual sees it or not.[377] Soul, both in its good variety and its bad variety, is essentially in change from one state to another, and passes from time to time out of one body into another. In the perpetual conflict between the good and the bad variety of soul, according as each man’s soul inclines to the better or to the worse, the Gods or Fate exalt it to a higher region or degrade it to a lower. By this means the Gods do the best they can to ensure triumph to virtue, and defeat to vice, in the entire Kosmos. This reference to the entire Kosmos is overlooked by the heretics who deny the all-pervading management of the Gods.[378]
[376] The language of Plato sometimes implies, that the opponents whom he is controverting disbelieve altogether the intervention of the Gods in human affairs, pp. 899 E, 900 A, 885 B. But the main stress of his argument is directed against those who, admitting the intervention of the Gods in great things, deny it in small, pp. 900 D, 901 A-B-C-D, 902 A-B.
[377] Plato, Legg. x. pp. 902-903 B-C.
[378] This argument is set forth from p. 903 B to 905 B. It is obscure and difficult to follow.
Contrary doctrine of Plato in Republic.
Plato gives here an outburst of religious eloquence which might prove impressive when addressed to fellow-believers — but which, if employed for the avowed purpose of convincing dissentients, would fail of its purpose, as involving assumptions to which they would not subscribe. As to the actual realities of human life, past as well as present, Plato himself always gives a very melancholy picture of them. “The heaven is full of good things, and also full of things opposite to good: but mostly of things not good.”[379] Moreover, when we turn back to the Republic, we find Plato therein expressly blaming a doctrine very similar to what he declares true here in the Leges — as a dangerous heresy, although extensively believed, from the time of Homer downward. “Since God is good” (Plato had there affirmed[380]) “he cannot be the cause of all things, as most men pronounce him to be. He is the cause of a few things, but of most things he is not the cause: for the good things in our lot are much fewer than the evil. We must ascribe all the good things to him, but for the evil things we must seek some other cause, and not God.” The confessed imperfection of the actual result[381] was one of the main circumstances urged by those heretics, who denied that all-pervading administration of the Gods which Plato in the Leges affirms.[382] If he undertook to convince them at all, he would have done well to state and answer more fully their arguments, and to clear up the apparent inconsistencies in his own creed.
[379] Plato, Legg. x. p. 906 A. ἐπειδὴ γὰρ συγκεχωρήκαμεν ἡμῖν αὐτοῖς εἶναι μὲν τὸν οὐρανὸν πολλῶν μεστὸν ἀγαθῶν, εἶναι δὲ καὶ τῶν ἐναντίων, πλειόνων δὲ τῶν μή, μάχη δή, φαμέν, ἀθάνατός ἐστιν ἡ τοιαύτη καὶ φυλακῆς θαυμαστῆς δεομένη. Ast in his note affirms that after μὴ is understood ἀγαθῶν. Stallbaum thinks, though with some hesitation, that ἐναντίων is understood after μή. I agree with Ast.
Compare iii. pp. 676-677, where Plato states that in the earlier history of the human race, a countless number of different societies (μυρίαι ἐπὶ μυρίαις) have all successively grown up and successively perished, with extinction of all their comforts and civilization.