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eternal doubt and eternal imperfection, and in which, after all, no real advance is ever made, because the position of the soul in regard to the highest truths remains as unchanged as in the present flowing world. We find but little, if any, trace of this doctrine of progress in the Scriptures. Revelation seems rather to intimate that, instead of this eternal moving on in the acquisitions of science, the perfection of the soul will rather consist in the beatific vision of those fixed, established truths, which are fundamental in the scheme of our redemption, and in the swelling moral emotions of the heavenly άyáлn—that charity to which all mere yvwois holds only the relation of a means which is to vanish away, and to be regarded as naught when its great end shall be accomplished. Nothing seems more clearly taught in the Bible than that one of the essential elements of the æonian state is fixedness and certainty. "Now we

see through a glass darkly, but then face to face."

In the Divine Soul these two apparently opposite ideas of repose and energy meet in their highest perfection; and whatever may be thought of the philosophical truth of Plato's comparison, it must certainly be admitted that there is a sublime, and even an almost divine beauty in thus taking as the symbol of the Eternal Mind the steady revolution of the "old rolling heavens," ever presenting to us the images of power, of calm yet resistless motion, of an ever-wakeful, ever energizing Providence, and of everlasting rest.

Plato, in the Epinomis, or Appendix to his dialogue on Laws, adverts to a very common prejudice, which would draw an atheistic objection from the unvarying regularity of the celestial courses. "It should be proof to men," he says, "that the revolutions of the heavenly bodies are under the direction of reason, because they ever do the same, even those things which had been planned and counselled ages beyond our conception. Yet the many think different. ly, and infer, from the fixedness and uniformity of their mo

tions, that they have not soul; and so they come to think that the human is rational and animated, because they observe in it variant and irregular motions (which seem to be the result of will), but that the divine is destitute of reason, because it ever abides in the same fixed courses: appov c μένον ἐν ταῖς αὐταῖς φοραῖς. And yet on this very account should we believe that there is a rational nature in the stars, because it ever doeth the same, and in the same manner, and preserving the same relations: τὸ κατὰ ταὐτὰ καὶ ὡσαύτως καὶ τὰ αὐτὰ πράττει ἀεί.” Epinomis, 982, D., E. In this passage, of which we have given a very free version, he seems to be aiming to show that the stars themselves are animated, yet still the argument is independent of that particular hypothesis. It is equally valid, whether they are regarded as under the control of the Supreme or subordinate intelligences; and the remarks apply with all their force to the position we have in hand, namely, that soul and reason must be steady, uniform, and immutable, in proportion as they are above the turbulence and irregularities of the sensible world; and that this, instead of being hostile to the doctrine of a minute and special providence, is absolutely essential to its perfection. This sublime and beautiful view of the everlasting constancy of the heavenly motions, as representative of the calmness, immutability, and absolute certainty in the operations of that Divine Will which is ever one with the Divine Reason, is thus admirably presented by Balbus the Stoic, in Cicero's second book De Natura Deorum, sec. 22: Nulla igitur in cælo nec fortuna nec temeritas nec erratio nec varietas inest; contraque omnis ORDO, VERITAS, RATIO, CONSTANTIA. Quæque his vacant ementita et falsa plenaque erroris, ea circum terras, infra lunam, quæ omnium ultima est, in terrisque

versantur.

In the Timæus, Plato gives us a most vivid picture of the converse of this truth, namely, the turbulence and rest

lessness of the soul under the overpowering influence of the world of sense and matter. We refer to that remarkable passage in which he represents the inferior divinities, or sons of God, first introducing into the ever-flowing material universe those newly formed human spirits which had just been generated from the anima mundi; if, rather, some parts of the description do not better apply to the infant soul of the world itself: Καὶ ὁ μὲν δὴ (ὁ ἀΐδιος πατὴρ) ταῦτα πάντα διατάξας ἔμενεν ἐν τῷ ἑαυτοῦ ἤθει. μένοντος δὲ, οἱ παῖδες τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς τάξιν νοήσαντες, καὶ λαβόντες ἀθά. νατον ἀρχὴν θνητοῦ ζώου, . . . τὰς τῆς ἀθανάτου ψυχῆς περιόδους ἐνέδουν εἰς ἐπίῤῥυτον σῶμα καὶ ἀπόῤῥυτον "And he (the Eternal Father) having arranged all these things, abode in his accustomed place (or mode of being). But the sons, having observed the method of the Father, and having taken the immortal principle of the mortal animal, bound the periods of the immortal spirit into the inflowing and outflowing body." Timæus, 42, P. This world of sense he compares to an ever-moving river, or, rather, to a wild and stormy torrent (κατακλύζον καὶ ἀποῤῥέον κῦμα), ever ebbing and rising, agitated by tempestuous winds (Šáλŋ πνευμάτων ὑπ' ἀέρος φερομένων), constantly surging, and bearing about with all violence the young spirit doomed to commence upon its ever-restless billows the morning of an eternal existence..

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In this condition, while the infant soul is the almost passive subject of impressions, which, through this sea of matter, invade it from without, it is tossed about TOTÈ μÈV ἐναντίας φορᾶς, τοτὲ πλαγίας, τοτὲ ὑπτίας, ἀλόγως, ἀτάκTWC-" sometimes in an adverse direction, sometimes obliquely, now erect, now supine, and, again, like one standing upon his head (οἷον ὅταν τις ὕπτιος ἐρείσας τὴν κεφα λὴν μὲν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, τοὺς δὲ πόδας προσβαλὼν ἄνω), and seeing all the phenomena of nature strangely inverted, with. out reason and without order; until (as is the case with

some), through the exercise of the rational principle constantly gaining the victory, and aided by right instructionἐὰν μὲν ἐπιλαμβάνηταί τις ὀρθὴ τροφὴ παιδεύσεως—it acquires calmness, abstraction, and stability; and having thus escaped from this most fearful disorder, comes at length under the abiding influence of immutable truth as exhibited in the eternal ideas of which matter presents only the flowing and varying diagrams. The whole passage is too long for insertion continuously, and some parts are quite difficult. We would, however, earnestly recommend its perusal to the student, not only for its most sublime imagery, but also for the profound philosophy of human nature which is contained beneath it. See the Timæus, from page 42, P., to page 44, D.

XXXIV.

Platonic Doctrine of the Animation of the Heavenly Bodies. Ancient Belief that each Nation had its own peculiar Guardian Damon or Genius.

PAGE 38, LINE 6. Ἥλιον καὶ σελήνην καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ἄσ Tрa. The next question, after deciding the nature of the governing soul, is, whether it is one supreme, or many subordinate (uíav πλɛíovç), engaged in these offices. Here is another point in Plato's theology which has given offence to some of his warmest admirers. It has also been the subject of peculiar animadversion by Warburton and others, who have been as far as possible removed from the Platonic spirit. They would charge our philosopher here with an absurd polytheism, in making each one of the heavenly bodies either a divinity in itself, or, at least, under the control of a separate divinity. If by this is meant that he did not believe in one Supreme Ineffable Power, the generator and creator of all other existences, whether divine (in the

U

Greek sense of dɛoí, as we have explained it, page 104) or human, the answer is found in places of his dialogues too numerous to mention; and especially might we refer to the remarkable passage in the Timæus (41, A.), in which the Eternal Parent thus addresses the inferior divinities to whom he had given being: Θεοὶ θεῶν ὧν ἐγὼ δημιουργὸς πατήρ τε ἔργων, κ. τ. λ. His great object here is to show, in opposition to the atheist, that soul, or yvxn, instead of Túxn, guides the motions of the heavenly bodies. Indeed, throughout the whole argument, he evidently regards the being of a God, and of soul generally, distinct from, and not a result of, bodily organization, as facts which involve each other, and which are shown by similar and equivalent proofs. He appears to have considered even a belief in the real entity of the human soul as inseparable from an acknowledgment of the Divine existence; so that the one was, as it were, the ground and guarantee of the other. In this respect, the language of the Hebrew oath, "as the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth," expressed the true spirit of his philosophy. In consequence, therefore, of his constantly using these terms for each other, we cannot be certain, when he speaks of soul or souls as guiding the motions of the heavenly bodies, whether he means that this was done by the direct agency of the Supreme Soul, or whether it was delegated to inferior spirits; and whether these delegated conducting powers resided severally in the bodies as an animating life, or were separate from them. All these are points which do not affect his main argument. Without making a division into those distinct hypostases which appear in the Timæus, he here uses yvyn as a general collective term for all that is immaterial, or, at least, as a name for the Deity, and all celestial or superhuman powers derived from, and dependent upon, him. This was enough for his argument, without any farther precision or explanation, when dealing with the atheist, who denied all powers above man, be they one or many.

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