nial of providence and the ascription of undue influence to sacrifices and vows. The atheistical doctrine derives its force from false impressions in regard to mind and body. It starts with ascribing the greatest and most beautiful of things to nature and chance, to the mixture and union of blind elements, by which all things, even including animals and the mind itself, were generated. The mind thus produced gave birth to the arts, some of which, as that of legislation, are built on an unnatural, and untrue basis. Legislation in turn gave birth to the gods,-who differ with the laws of different States,-as well as to the shifting forms of moral beauty and justice. This theory must be overthrown by a truer view of nature, which putting the soul and all its kindred first in order of time, shall assign to what is vulgarly called nature a lower and posterior place. The proof of the divine existence is drawn from the subject of motion, xívnois, which term includes changes of place, form and state in bodies, and the movements of minds. In the order of nature something which moves itself and other things, must be prior to that which can only move other things, and finds the beginning of its own motion out of itself. This selfmoving or vital power belongs to what we call soul, which must therefore be prior to body destitute of such a power. And in the same way all the properties of soul must be prior to those of body.1 It must then be the cause of all things, good or evil; and must regulate the heavens. It will be seen that the idea of creation out of nothing no more enters into these views than into the common argument for a designing cause from the marks of design in nature. The interesting inquiry now arises, did Plato believe in a creation out of nothing, or did he like other physical inquirers of antiquity conceive of this as something impossible? Mr. Lewis, in a long Excursus upon the maxim, de nihilo nihil, has examined this point, but seems to have arrived at no certain conclusions. "It is by no means clear," he says, "that the eternity of matter was ever held by Plato.2 Some doxý or principle seems to have been in his 1 Plato's words are these when literally rendered, (896. D): “characters and manners and wishes and reasonings and true opinions and attention and memory must have existed prior to length and breadth and depth and strength of bodies since the soul is prior to the body." At the close he seems to mean that mind must be the cause of these properties of particular bodies: that is, that the reason why one is as long as it is, etc. involves the antecedent existence of some mind. But what is intended by iμéλɛiai before the generation of things? 2 Note 50. But in Note 17, he says: "It seems to us perfectly clear that in every sense of the word, as used by modern philosophy, he held matter to be junior to soul." 535 1845.] Plato's Views in respect to the Creation of Matter. mind as the origin of matter, which was not matter; and yet something separate from the Deity and existing with him before the formation of the outward universe." But" in a passage of the Sophista, Plato speaks of a creation by the direct act of God, and that, too, from things which before were not." Upon no part of philosophy could we more wish for a clear expression of opinion from Plato-a profession of faith not wrapped up in magnificent words and in a mythic dress-than upon this. It is this obscurity and vagueness, whether in his views or style, which has led philosophers to opposite sides in interpreting his doctrines. To mention but one or two opinions. Cudworth takes the ground that Plato teaches a creation out of nothing, while Mosheim and most writers since his day go over to the other side. Ackermann maintains that he held that while the world came from God, God was never without the world. Stallbaum contends that so foolish and absurd a thought as the eternity of matter was quite foreign to Plato's way of thinking, and seeks to remove the appearance of such a doctrine from the Timaeus. To us it seems likely that Plato conceived of matter as an eternal principle by the side of God. But then it was a principle in a very different sense from that in which God and ideas were principles It was not the cause of the reality and essence of outward things, but was rather to be classed itself with non-existences. To it was to be ascribed that there could be outward things, but the perpetual flux and the necessary imperfection of outward things were due to it also. Plato nowhere gives it the name which it afterwards bore, and contents himself with describing it as without form or quality, endued with a capacity of putting on every bodily form like the materials in the carpenter's hands. With such a view of matter, it is scarcely more strange that Plato felt no necessity of referring it to a cause, than that we feel none in respect to time and space. The passage of Sophista, where Mr. Lewis finds creative agency ascribed to God, must receive, as we think, another explanation. In that place Plato speaks of animals, plants, and inanimate organizations existing in the earth, as caused by God to come into being, when before they were not (γίγνεσθαι πρότερον οὐκ ὄντα). This is introduced as an instance of the nomiǹ dúvaμs, the definition of which is given in the words ἥτις ἂν αἰτία γίγνηται τοῖς μὴ πρότερον οὖσιν ὕστερον γίγνεσθαι. This power thus mentioned is divided into human and divine, so that men are said to create in the passage just as much as God is. Nothing more then can be intended than generation! implying elements or substance previously existing. Having shown that soul is prior to body and the cause of all movement, Plato puts the question, Whether one soul is a sufficient cause or more than one. In answer he says we must not start with less than two, the one beneficent, the other able to do things of a contrary kind. The beneficent, endowed with reason, which is a divine thing,2 guides all things aright and towards happiness; the other destitute of reason brings about the opposite result, 896. E-897. That the rational and virtuous kind of soul bears sway through heaven and earth and the whole circuit of things rather than the other is proved by the order and system of the world, which are akin to those of reason. Afterwards he says (906. A), that heaven (ròv ovgarór, i. e. the visible world) is full of many good things, and many evils, which last3 are the more numerous, and that hence an eternal struggle arises, demanding surprising vigilance. For our allies we have the gods and daemons, whose possessions we are. We are destroyed by injustice and unbridled passion united to want of reason; and are saved by righteousness and self-restraint in alliance with reason,virtues which have the vital forces of the gods for their abode, though a little of them may also be found dwelling in us here below." These passages are remarkable, because they have the look of teaching something like dualism; a theory rather oriental than congenial to the Greek mind. In this manner Tennemann and C. F. Hermann have understood them.4 Mr. Lewis is of the same mind, and finds traces of this dualism in other passages which have eluded our notice. "We have here presented," he says, that grand defect in Plato's theology, which mars by its presence almost every part of his otherwise noble system. It is 1 Comp. Xen. Mem. 2. 2. 3. ούς [i. e. παῖδας] οἱ γονεῖς ἐκ μὲν οὐκ ὄντων ἐποίησαν είναι. Here (897. B) there is much less MSS. authority for deòç ovσa than veiov ὀρθῶς. But the great variations in this place throw suspicion even on θείον. 3 εἶναι—πολλῶν μεστὸν ἀγαθῶν, εἶναι δὲ καὶ τῶν ἐναντίων, πλειόνων δε τῶν μή In this passage τῶν μὴ can only be τῶν μὴ ἀγαθῶν; which is the more natural, because vavríov is the same as μǹ ȧyaðāv. These words cannot be made to mean things neither good nor bad. * See Tennemann's Gesch. der Philos. 2. 230. 1st ed. and C. F. Hermann's Gesch. u. System der Platon. Philos. I. 552 and note 739. The latter author says that the tenth book of the Laws "eröffnet den Blick in einem ganz andern Dualismus als der des Timaeus ist," by which I conceive him to intend a dualism in which God and an irrational psyche are the principles instead of God and hyle. 1845.] Did Plato believe in Dualism? 537 most clear from this and other passages in his dialogues, that he held the doctrine of two uncreated principles or souls, the one good, or the benefactor, as he styles him, the other evil." This principle he finds alluded to in the Timaeus, as the source of wild and confused motion, before harmony was brought into the world by its builder. As however no personal existence is there ascribed to the source of disorder, and as this disorder existed in visible things, it may be that Plato there speaks of matter endowed with the power of irregular motion,-of a chaos in short, just like that of many other cosmogonies-than that he speaks of a malevolent soul.' Cousin endeavors to smooth away the difficulties which these passages contain, by regarding the hypothesis of two principles as a point of departure for the question, whether a good or a bad principle governs the universe. If there is disorder and evil in the world, Plato would reason, a bad principle must reign in it; if order and wisdom, a good. As the latter is true we must reject the hypothesis of two principles, which was admitted for a moment. This however is not a satisfactory adjustment of the case, for Plato affirms that there is actual evil in the universe, though it' may not be predominant. There must then be one or more evil souls though, not predominant. And indeed Cousin does not know what to do with the second of the passages, that in 906. A; in which place, if we interpret it of a moral dualism, there is a tone of despair utterly unlike Plato's general mood of mind. Plutarch, near the beginning of his treatise on the procreation of the soul according to Timaeus,' gives still another explanation, which deserves to be mentioned. After affirming that God made the essence neither of soul nor of body, but having these principles furnished to his hand, merely introduced order and reason into them, he goes on to find supports for this tenet in some of the Platonic works, and among the rest in the first of these passages. "Plato," says he, "in the Laws speaks of a soul without order and malevolent, which is soul in itself. It partook of mind, reason and harmony to become the soul of the world."3 If there is any justice in Plutarch's explanation, we might sup- We must certainly, if this be true, suppose an inconsistency between these two works in regard to motion, as on the supposition in the text the primordial matter was in motion. 2 In Vol. VIII. p. 470 of his translation of Plato. 3 See § 6. 2. and 7. 4 of Dübner's edition, Paris 1841. The same opinion occurs likewise in the fourth of the Platonic questions. pose that Plato finally rested in the notion of a substance existing prior to bodies out of which they were formed, and of another out of which souls were formed. The maxim de nihilo nihil fit, if received by him, might lead him to this result, provided he considered souls essentially different from bodies, as he doubtless did.1 Now the existence of evil and that of motion were to be accounted for. The first he found for a long time in matter-in the necessary departure of generated things from their ideal type. But as matter was merely passive, he sought for an active principle, the cause of motion and of evil both. This he found in that primeval soul-mass, which, being destitute of reason, could of itself exert only a disorderly and misdirected energy of desire. Out of this substance human souls were made and derived from it their capacity to go astray. This theory might be called, as it regards the causes of good and evil, a kind of dualism, and as it regards fundamental causes in general, a theory of three principles. For ourselves, not knowing of anything, which by clear interpretation can be construed into dualism in Plato, we feel constrained to explain these words in consistency with what is elsewhere taught by him concerning the origin of evil being found in matter. was thinking in both passages of evil in the visible world and especially among men. The classes of souls doing good and evil, -for yvy in the first passage may be a collective,—are the divine on the one hand, and the soul of the world and human souls on the other. The causes of evil in the world cannot lie in the contrary impulses of two hostile gods, as Plato expressly says in Politicus 269. D; but in the fact that the world,—and the like is true of men, although an animal and endowed with intelligence, yet because it partakes of a body, is liable to change and disorder.2 To these souls, so connected with matter, belong false opinions and all the causes of unhappiness. To aid them in overcoming evil-and here probably the notion of human souls was especially in Plato's mind,-God has so arranged the system of things, as to throw the weight of his providence and government on the side of good. In the second passage, where it is said that heaven or the visible world abounds with good and evil but with the latter more, and that a ceaseless struggle is kept up, he was thinking particu The soul of the world in Timaeus (p. 35) is compounded in a way which we confess we do not understand. One of the parts, according to Stallbaum, is derived from the primitive matter, out of which bodies were framed. Others give very different explanations. 2 Comp. Stallb. Prolegom. in Politicum. p. 106. |