Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

408 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH ANDpopular belief in the gods may be, and howeverunsatisfactory to him the allegorical interpretationsof it then so much in vogue, yet is it in Plato'sconviction indispensable to all those who havenot had a scientific education. Men must first betaught with lies, and then with the truth: the popularfables and the worship grounded on themis therefore for all the first, and for most the onlyform of religion.57 The philosopher, it is true "sees deeper and despises them in his heart. Thusthe monotheist in speculation is a polytheist inpractice : as Socrates, the model and exemplar ofGreek philosophy, with his dying breath, so Platoits most inspired teacher with all the voice of hisauthority, sacrificed the cock to ./Esculapius.But moreover, this supreme God, who has tobe disinterred from the recesses of the Platonicteaching, and conciliated with the worship practicallypaid to a host of subordinate gods, is inPlato's conception neither absolutely personal norfree, and he is not the Creator but only the Formerof the world. In Plato's theory there is coeternalwith him a first matter, without form or quality,which exists independently of him; which more-over is inhabited and swayed to and fro in disorderlyheavings by a sort of soul, the token of57 Here Zeller remarks : " Diese Voraussetzung liegt der ganzen Be-handlung dieser Gegenstande bei Plato zu Grunde. . . . Dass die philo-sophisclie Erkenntniss immer auf eine kleine Minderheit beschrankt seinmiisse ist Plato's entscliiedeue Ueberzeugung."