Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY.403gether into a sort of mosaic,52 we should find thefollowing picture. The everlasting essence ofthings, with which Philosophy deals, is the highestobject. Ideas are those everlasting gods afterthe pattern of which the world and all things whichare in it are formed, and the Godhead, taken absolutely,is not distinct from the highest Idea. Platosets forth the causality of Ideas and the sway ofreason in the world together with the impossibilityto explain what is generated save by an Ingenerate,motion save by a soul, and the ordered dispositionof the world, working out a purpose, save by reason; and in all which he declares respecting theGodhead, the Idea of Good, of the highest metaphysicaland ethical perfection, is his guiding-point. As this highest Idea stands at,the head ofall Ideas as the cause of all being and knowledge,so the one everlasting invisible God, the Formerand Father of all things, stands at the head of allthe gods, alike difficult to find and to describe.Just as the above Idea is distinguished by the conceptionof the Good, so Plato selects goodness asGod's most essential attribute. It is on this groundthat he maintains the Godhead to be absolutelygood and upright, and its operation to be merelygood and upright; against the old notion whichimputed envy to it, and derived evil from it.52 This has been done by Zeller, vol. ii. part 1, pp. 599-602, fromwhom I take it. He supports his analysis with a great number of referencesto various works of Plato.