Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good Part 5

Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good Part 5

Fenelon is inspired at once by Malebranche and Descartes in the treatise, _de l'Existence de Dieu_. The second part is entirely Cartesian in method, in the order and sequence of the proofs.

Nevertheless, Malebranche also appears there, especially in the fourth chapter, on the nature of ideas, and he predominates in all the metaphysical portions of the first part. After the explanations which we have given, it will not be difficult for you to discern what is true and what is at times excessive in the pa.s.sages which follow:[60]

Part i., chap. lii. "Oh! how great is the mind of man! It bears in itself what astonishes itself and infinitely surpa.s.ses itself. Its ideas are universal, eternal, and immutable.... The idea of the infinite is in me as well as that of lines, numbers, and circles....--Chap. liv.

Besides this idea of the infinite, I have also universal and immutable notions, which are the rule of all my judgments. I can judge of nothing except by consulting them, and it is not in my power to judge against what they represent to me. My thoughts, far from being able to correct this rule, are themselves corrected in spite of me by this superior rule, and they are irresistibly adjusted to its decision. Whatever effort of mind I may make, I can never succeed in doubting that two and two are four; that the whole is not greater than any of its parts; that the centre of a perfect circle is not equidistant from all points of the circ.u.mference. I am not at liberty to deny these propositions; and if I deny these truths, or others similar to them, I have in me something that is above me, that forces me to the conclusion. This fixed and immutable rule is so internal and so intimate that I am inclined to take it for myself; but it is above me since it corrects me, redresses me, and puts me in defiance against myself, and reminds me of my impotence.

It is something that suddenly inspires me, provided I listen to it, and I am never deceived except in not listening to it.... This internal rule is what I call my reason....--Chap. lv. In truth my reason is in me; for I must continually enter into myself in order to find it. But the higher reason which corrects me when necessary, which I consult, exists not by me, and makes no part of me. This rule is perfect and immutable; I am changing and imperfect. When I am deceived, it does not lose its integrity. When I am undeceived, it is not this that returns to its end: it is this which, without ever having deviated, has the authority over me to remind me of my error, and to make me return. It is a master within, which makes me keep silent, which makes me speak, which makes me believe, which makes me doubt, which makes me acknowledge my errors or confirm my judgments. Listening to it, I am instructed; listening to myself, I err. This master is everywhere, and its voice makes itself heard, from end to end of the universe, in all men as well as in me....--Chap. lvi.... That which appears the most in us and seems to be the foundation of ourselves, I mean our reason, is that which is least of all our own, which we are constrained to believe to be especially borrowed. We receive without cessation, and at all moments, a reason superior to us, as we breathe without cessation the air, which is a foreign body....--Chap. lvii. The internal and universal master always and everywhere speaks the same truths. We are not this master. It is true that we often speak without it, and more loftily than it. But we are then deceived, we are stammering, we do not understand ourselves. We even fear to see that we are deceived, and we close the ear through fear of being humiliated by its corrections. Without doubt, man, who fears being corrected by this incorruptible reason, who always wanders in not following it, is not that perfect, universal, immutable reason which corrects him in spite of himself. In all things we find, as it were, two principles within us. One gives, the other receives; one wants, the other supplies; one is deceived, the other corrects; one goes wrong by its own inclination, the other rectifies it.... Each one feels within himself a limited and subaltern reason, which wanders when it escapes a complete subordination, which is corrected only by returning to the yoke of another superior, universal, and immutable power. So every thing in us bears the mark of a subaltern, limited, partial, borrowed reason, which needs another to correct it at every moment. All men are rational, because they possess the same reason which is communicated to them in different degrees. There is a certain number of wise men; but the wisdom which they receive, as it were, from the fountain-head, which makes them what they are, is one and the same....--Chap. lviii. Where is this wisdom? Where is this reason, which is both common and superior to all the limited and imperfect reasons of the human race? Where, then, is this oracle which is never silent, against which the vain prejudices of peoples are always impotent? Where is this reason which we ever need to consult, which comes to us to inspire us with the desire of listening to its voice? Where is this light _that lighteneth every man that cometh into the world_.... The substance of the human eye is not light; on the contrary, the eye borrows at each moment the light of the sun's rays. So my mind is not the primitive reason, the universal and immutable truth, it is only the medium that conducts this original light, that is illuminated by it....--Chap. lx. I find two reasons in myself,--one is myself, the other is above me. That which is in me is very imperfect, faulty, uncertain, preoccupied, precipitate, subject to aberration, changing, conceited, ignorant, and limited; in fine, it possesses nothing but what it borrows. The other is common to all men, and is superior to all; it is perfect, eternal, immutable, always ready to communicate itself in all places, and to rectify all minds that are deceived, in fine, incapable of ever being exhausted or divided, although it gives itself to those who desire it. Where is this perfect reason, that is so near me and so different from me? Where is it? It must be something real.... Where is this supreme reason? Is it not G.o.d that I am seeking?"

Part ii., chap. i., sect. 28.[61] "I have in me the idea of the infinite and of infinite perfection.... Give me a finite thing as great as you please--let it quite transcend the reach of my senses, so that it becomes, as it were, infinite to my imagination; it always remains finite in my mind; I conceive a limit to it, even when I cannot imagine it. I am not able to mark the limit; but I know that it exists; and far from confounding it with the infinite, I conceive it as infinitely distant from the idea that I have of the veritable infinite. If one speaks to me of the indefinite as a mean between the two extremes of the infinite and the limited, I reply, that it signifies nothing, that, at least, it only signifies something truly finite, whose boundaries escape the imagination without escaping the mind.... Sect. 29. Where have I obtained this idea, which is so much above me, which infinitely surpa.s.ses me, which astonishes me, which makes me disappear in my own eyes, which renders the infinite present to me? Whence does it come?

Where have I obtained it?... Once more, whence comes this marvellous representation of the infinite, which pertains to the infinite itself, which resembles nothing finite? It is in me, it is more than myself; it seems to me every thing, and myself nothing. I can neither efface, obscure, diminish, nor contradict it. It is in me; I have not put it there, I have found it there; and I have found it there only because it was already there before I sought it. It remains there invariable, even when I do not think of it, when I think of something else. I find it whenever I seek it, and it often presents itself when I am not seeking it. It does not depend upon me; I depend upon it.... Moreover, who has made this infinite representation of the infinite, so as to give it to me? Has it made itself? Has the infinite image[62] of the infinite had no original, according to which it has been made, no real cause that has produced it? Where are we in relation to it? And what a ma.s.s of extravagances! It is, therefore, absolutely necessary to conclude that it is the infinitely perfect being that renders himself immediately present to me, when I conceive him, and that he himself is the idea which I have of him...."

Chap. iv., sect. 49. "... My ideas are myself; for they are my reason.... My ideas, and the basis of myself, or of my mind, appear but the same thing. On the other hand, my mind is changing, uncertain, ignorant, subject to error, precipitate in its judgments, accustomed to believe what it does not clearly understand, and to judge without having sufficiently consulted its ideas, which are by themselves certain and immutable. My ideas, then, are not myself, and I am not my ideas. What shall I believe, then, they can be?... What then! are my ideas G.o.d?

They are superior to my mind, since they rectify and correct it; they have the character of the Divinity, for they are universal and immutable like G.o.d; they really subsist, according to a principle that we have already established: nothing exists so really as that which is universal and immutable. If that which is changing, transitory, and derived, truly exists, much more does that which cannot change, and is necessary. It is then necessary to find in nature something existing and real, that is, my ideas, something that is within me, and is not myself, that is superior to me, that is in me even when I am not thinking of it, with which I believe myself to be alone, as though I were only with myself, in fine, that is more present to me, and more intimate than my own foundation. I know not what this something, so admirable, so familiar, so unknown, can be, except G.o.d."

Let us now hear the most solid, the most authoritative of the Christian doctors of the seventeenth century--let us hear Bossuet in his _Logic_, and in the _Treatise on the Knowledge of G.o.d and Self_.[63]

Bossuet may be said to have had three masters in philosophy--St.

Augustine, St. Thomas, and Descartes. He had been taught at the college of Navarre the doctrine of St. Thomas, that is to say, a modified peripateticism; at the same time he was nourished by the reading of St.

Augustine, and out of the schools he found spread abroad the philosophy of Descartes. He adopted it, and had no difficulty in reconciling it with that of St. Augustine, while, upon more than one point, it corroborated the doctrine of St. Thomas. Bossuet invented nothing in philosophy; he received every thing, but every thing united and purified, thanks to that supreme good sense which in him is a quality predominating over force, grandeur, and eloquence.[64] In the pa.s.sages which I am about to exhibit to you, which I hope you will impress upon your memories, you will not find the grace of Malebranche, the exhaustless abundance of Fenelon; you will find what is better than either, to wit, clearness and precision--all the rest in him is in some sort an addition to these.

Fenelon disengages badly enough the process which conducts from ideas, from universal and necessary truths, to G.o.d. Bossuet renders to himself a strict account of this process, and marks it with force; it is the principle that we have invoked, that which concludes from attributes in a subject, from qualities in a being, from laws in a legislator, from eternal verities in an eternal mind that comprehends them and eternally possesses them. Bossuet cites St. Augustine, cites Plato himself, interprets him and defends him in advance against those who would make Platonic ideas beings subsisting by themselves, whilst they really exist only in the mind of G.o.d.

_Logic_, book i., chap. x.x.xvi. "When I consider a rectilineal triangle as a figure bounded by three straight lines, and having three angles equal to two right angles, neither more nor less; and when I pa.s.s from this to an equilateral triangle with its three sides and its three angles equal, whence it follows, that I consider each angle of this triangle as less than a right angle; and when I come again to consider a right-angled triangle, and what I clearly see in this idea, in connection with the preceding ideas, that the two angles of this triangle are necessarily acute, and that these two acute angles are exactly equal to one right angle, neither more nor less--I see nothing contingent and mutable, and consequently, the ideas that represent to me these truths are eternal. Were there not in nature a single equilateral or right-angled triangle, or any triangle whatever, every thing that I have just considered would remain always true and indubitable. In fact, I am not sure of having ever seen an equilateral or rectilineal triangle. Neither the rule nor the dividers could a.s.sure me that any human hand, however skilful, could ever make a line exactly straight, or sides and angles perfectly equal to each other. In strictness, we should only need a microscope, in order, not to understand, but to see at a glance, that the lines which we trace deviate from straightness, and differ in length. We have never seen, then, any but imperfect images of equilateral, rectilineal, or isosceles triangles, since they neither exist in nature, nor can be constructed by art. Nevertheless, what we see of the nature and the properties of a triangle, independently of every existing triangle, is certain and indubitable. Place an understanding in any given time, or at any point in eternity, thus to speak, and it will see these truths equally manifest; they are, therefore, eternal. Since the understanding does not give being to truth, but is only employed in perceiving truth, it follows, that were every created understanding destroyed, these truths would immutably subsist...."

Chap. x.x.xvii. "Since there is nothing eternal, immutable, independent, but G.o.d alone, we must conclude that these truths do not subsist in themselves, but in G.o.d alone, and in his eternal ideas, which are nothing else than himself.

"There are those who, in order to verify these eternal truths which we have proposed, and others of the same nature, have figured to themselves eternal essences aside from deity--a pure illusion, which comes from not understanding that in G.o.d, as in the source of being, and in his understanding, where resides the art of making and ordering all things, are found primitive ideas, or as St. Augustine says, the eternally subsisting reasons of things. Thus, in the thought of the architect is the primitive idea of a house which he perceives in himself; this intellectual house would not be destroyed by any ruin of houses built according to this interior model; and if the architect were eternal, the idea and the reason of the house would also be eternal. But, without recurring to the mortal architect, there is an immortal architect, or rather a primitive eternally subsisting art in the immutable thought of G.o.d, where all order, all measure, all rule, all proportion, all reason, in a word, all truth are found in their origin.

"These eternal verities which our ideas represent, are the true object of science; and this is the reason why Plato, in order to render us truly wise, continually reminds us of these ideas, wherein is seen, not what is formed, but what is, not what is begotten and is corrupt, what appears and vanishes, what is made and defective, but what eternally subsists. It is this intellectual world which that divine philosopher has put in the mind of G.o.d before the world was constructed, which is the immutable model of that great work. These are the simple, eternal, immutable, unbegotten, incorruptible ideas to which he refers us, in order to understand truth. This is what has made him say that our ideas, images of the divine ideas, were also immediately derived from the divine ideas, and did not come by the senses, which serve very well, said he, to awaken them, but not to form them in our mind. For if, without having ever seen any thing eternal, we have so clear an idea of eternity, that is to say, of being that is always the same; if, without having perceived a perfect triangle, we understand it distinctly, and demonstrate so many incontestable truths concerning it, it is a mark that these ideas do not come from our senses."

_Treatise on the Knowledge of G.o.d and Self._[65] Chap. iv., sect. 5.

_Intelligence has for its object eternal truths, which are nothing else than G.o.d himself, in whom they are always subsisting and perfectly understood._

"... We have already remarked that the understanding has eternal verities for its object. The standards by which we measure all things are eternal and invariable. We know clearly that every thing in the universe is made according to proportion, from the greatest to the least, from the strongest to the weakest, and we know it well enough to understand that these proportions are related to the principles of eternal truth. All that is demonstrated in mathematics, and in any other science whatever, is eternal and immutable, since the effect of the demonstration is to show that the thing cannot be otherwise than as it is demonstrated to be. So, in order to understand the nature and the properties of things which I know, for example, a triangle, a square, a circle, or the relations of these figures, and all other figures, to each other, it is not necessary that I should find such in nature, and I may be sure that I have never traced, never seen, any that are perfect.

Neither is it necessary that I should think that there is motion in the world in order to understand the nature of motion itself, or that of the lines which every motion describes, and the hidden proportions according to which it is developed. When the idea of these things is once awakened in my mind, I know that, whether they have an actual existence or not, so they must be, that it is impossible for them to be of another nature, or to be made in a different way. To come to something that concerns us more nearly, I mean by these principles of eternal truth, that they do not depend on human existence, that, so far as he is capable of reasoning, it is the essential duty of man to live according to reason, and to search for his maker, through fear of lacking the recognition of his maker, if in fault of searching for him, he should be ignorant of him. All these truths, and all those which I deduce from them by sure reasoning, subsist independently of all time. In whatever time I place a human understanding, it will know them, but in knowing them it will find them truths, it will not make them such, for our cognitions do not make their objects, but suppose them. So these truths subsist before all time, before the existence of a human understanding: and were every thing that is made according to the laws of proportion, that is to say, every thing that I see in nature, destroyed except myself, these laws would be preserved in my thought, and I should clearly see that they would always be good and always true, were I also destroyed with the rest.

"If I seek how, where, and in what subject they subsist eternal and immutable, as they are, I am obliged to avow the existence of a being in whom truth is eternally subsisting, in whom it is always understood; and this being must be truth itself, and must be all truth, and from him it is that truth is derived in every thing that exists and has understanding out of him.

"It is, then, in him, in a certain manner, who is incomprehensible[66]

to me, it is in him, I say, that I see these eternal truths; and to see them is to turn to him who is immutably all truth, and to receive his light.

"This eternal object is G.o.d eternally subsisting, eternally true, eternally truth itself.... It is in this eternal that these eternal truths subsist. It is also by this that I see them. All other men see them as well as myself, and we see them always the same, and as having existed before us. For we know that we have commenced, and we know that these truths have always been. Thus we see them in a light superior to ourselves, and it is in this superior light that we see whether we act well or ill, that is to say, whether we act according to these const.i.tutive principles of our being or not. In that, then, we see, with all other truths, the invariable rules of our conduct, and we see that there are things in regard to which duty is indispensable, and that in things which are naturally indifferent, the true duty is to accommodate ourselves to the greatest good of society. A well-disposed man conforms to the civil laws, as he conforms to custom. But he listens to an inviolable law in himself, which says to him that he must do wrong to no one, that it is better to be injured than to injure.... The man who sees these truths, by these truths judges himself, and condemns himself when he errs. Or, rather, these truths judge him, since they do not accommodate themselves to human judgments, but human judgments are accommodated to them. And the man judges rightly when, feeling these judgments to be variable in their nature, he gives them for a rule these eternal verities.

"These eternal verities which every understanding always perceives the same, by which every understanding is governed, are something of G.o.d, or rather, are G.o.d himself....

"Truth must somewhere be very perfectly understood, and man is to himself an indubitable proof of this. For, whether he considers himself or extends his vision to the beings that surround him, he sees every thing subjected to certain laws, and to immutable rules of truth. He sees that he understands these laws, at least in part,--he who has neither made himself, nor any part of the universe, however small, and he sees that nothing could have been made had not these laws been elsewhere perfectly understood; and he sees that it is necessary to recognize an eternal wisdom wherein all law, all order, all proportion, have their primitive reason. For it is absurd to suppose that there is so much sequence in truths, so much proportion in things, so much economy in their arrangement, that is to say, in the world, and that this sequence, this proportion, this economy, should nowhere be understood:--and man, who has made nothing, veritably knowing these things, although not fully knowing them, must judge that there is some one who knows them in their perfection, and that this is he who has made all things...."

Sect. 6 is wholly Cartesian. Bossuet there demonstrates that the soul knows by the imperfection of its own intelligence that there is elsewhere a perfect intelligence.

In sect. 9, Bossuet elucidates anew the relation of truth to G.o.d.

"Whence comes to my intelligence this impression, so pure, of truth?

Whence come to it those immutable rules that govern reasoning, that form manners, by which it discovers the secret proportions of figures and of movements? Whence come to it, in a word, those eternal truths which I have considered so much? Do the triangles, the squares, the circles, that I rudely trace on paper, impress upon my mind their proportions and their relations? Or are there others whose perfect trueness produces this effect? Where have I seen these circles and these triangles so true,--I who am not sure of ever having seen a perfectly regular figure, and, nevertheless, understand this regularity so perfectly? Are there somewhere, either in the world or out of the world, triangles or circles existing with this perfect regularity, whereby it could be impressed upon my mind? And do these rules of reasoning and conduct also exist in some place, whence they communicate to me their immutable truth? Or, indeed, is it not rather he who has everywhere extended measure, proportion, truth itself, that impresses on my mind the certain idea of them?... It is, then, necessary to understand that the soul, made in the image of G.o.d, capable of understanding truth, which is G.o.d himself, actually turns towards its original, that is to say, towards G.o.d, where the truth appears to it as soon as G.o.d wills to make the truth appear to it.... It is an astonishing thing that man understands so many truths, without understanding at the same time that all truth comes from G.o.d, that it is in G.o.d, that it is G.o.d himself.... It is certain that G.o.d is the primitive reason of all that exists and has understanding in the universe; that he is the true original, and that every thing is true by relation to his eternal idea, that seeking truth is seeking him, and that finding truth is finding him...."

Chap. v., sect. 14. "The senses do not convey to the soul knowledge of truth. They excite it, awaken it, and apprize it of certain effects: it is solicited to search for causes, but it discovers them, it sees their connections, the principles which put them in motion, only in a superior light that comes from G.o.d, or is G.o.d himself. G.o.d is, then, truth, which is always the same to all minds, and the true source of intelligence.

For this reason intelligence beholds the light, breathes, and lives."

At the close of the seventeenth century, Leibnitz comes to crown these great testimonies, and to complete their unanimity.

Here is a pa.s.sage from an important treatise ent.i.tled, _Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et Idaeis_, in which Leibnitz declares that primary notions are the attributes of G.o.d. "I know not," he says, "whether man can perfectly account to himself for his ideas, except by ascending to primary ideas for which he can no more account, that is to say, to the absolute attributes of G.o.d."[67]

The same doctrine is in the _Principia Philosophiae seu Theses in Gratiam Principis Eugenii_. "The intelligence of G.o.d is the region of eternal truths, and the ideas that depend upon them."[68]

_Theodicea_, part ii., sect. 189.[69] "It must not be said with the Scotists that eternal truths would subsist if there were no understanding, not even that of G.o.d. For, in my opinion, it is the divine understanding that makes the reality of eternal truths."

_Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain_, book ii., chap. xvii. "The idea of the absolute is in us internally like that of being. _These absolutes are nothing else than the attributes of G.o.d_, and it may be said they are just as much the source of ideas as G.o.d is in himself the principle of beings."

_Ibid._, book iv., chap. xi. "But it will be demanded where those ideas would be if no mind existed, and what would then become of the real foundation of this certainty of eternal truths? That brings us in fine to the last foundation of truths, to wit, to that supreme and universal mind which cannot be dest.i.tute of existence, whose understanding, to speak truly, is the region of eternal truths, as St. Augustine saw and clearly enough expressed it. And that it may not be thought necessary to recur to it, we must consider that these necessary truths contain the determinating reason and the regulative principle of existences themselves, and, in a word, the laws of the universe. So these unnecessary truths, being anterior to the existences of contingent beings, must have their foundation in the existence of a necessary substance. It is there that I find the original of truths which are stamped upon our souls, not in the form of propositions, but as sources, the application and occasions of which will produce actual enunciations."

So, from Plato to Leibnitz, the greatest metaphysicians have thought that absolute truth is an attribute of absolute being. Truth is incomprehensible without G.o.d, as G.o.d is incomprehensible without truth.

Truth is placed between human intelligence and the supreme intelligence, as a kind of mediator. In the lowest degree, as well as at the height of being, G.o.d is everywhere met, for truth is everywhere. Study nature, elevate yourselves to the laws that govern it and make of it as it were a living truth:--the more profoundly you understand its laws, the nearer you approach to G.o.d. Study, above all, humanity; humanity is much greater than nature, for it comes from G.o.d as well as nature, and knows him, while nature is ignorant of him. Especially seek and love truth, and refer it to the immortal being who is its source. The more you know of the truth, the more you know of G.o.d. The sciences, so far from turning us away from religion, conduct us to it. Physics, with their laws, mathematics, with their sublime ideas, especially philosophy, which cannot take a single step without encountering universal and necessary principles, are so many stages on the way to Deity, and, thus to speak, so many temples in which homage is perpetually paid to him.

But in the midst of these high considerations, let us carefully guard ourselves against two opposite errors, from which men of fine genius have not always known how to preserve themselves,--against the error of making the reason of man purely individual, and against the error of confounding it with truth and the divine reason.[70] If the reason of man is purely individual because it is in the individual, it can comprehend nothing that is not individual, nothing that transcends the limits wherein it is confined. Not only is it unable to elevate itself to any universal and necessary truth, not only is it unable to have any idea of it, even any suspicion of it, as one blind from his birth can have no suspicion that a sun exists; but there is no power, not even that of G.o.d, that by any means could make penetrate the reason of man any truth of that order absolutely repugnant to its nature; since, for this end, it would not be sufficient for G.o.d to lighten our mind; it would be necessary to change it, to add to it another faculty. Neither, on the other hand, must we, with Malebranche, make the reason of man to such a degree impersonal that it takes the place of truth which is its object, and of G.o.d who is its principle. It is truth that to us is absolutely impersonal, and not reason. Reason is in man, yet it comes from G.o.d. Hence it is individual and finite, whilst its root is in the infinite; it is personal by its relation to the person in which it resides, and must also possess I know not what character of universality, of necessity even, in order to be capable of conceiving universal and necessary truths; hence it seems, by turns, according to the point of view from which it is regarded, pitiable and sublime. Truth is in some sort lent to human reason, but it belongs to a totally different reason, to wit, that supreme, eternal, uncreated reason, which is G.o.d himself. The truth in us is nothing else than our object; in G.o.d, it is one of his attributes, as well as justice, holiness, mercy, as we shall subsequently see. G.o.d exists; and so far as he exists, he thinks, and his thoughts are truths, eternal as himself, which are reflected in the laws of the universe, which the reason of man has received the power to attain. Truth is the offspring, the utterance, I was about to say, the eternal word of G.o.d, if it is permitted philosophy to borrow this divine language from that holy religion which teaches us to worship G.o.d in spirit and in truth. Of old, the theory of Ideas, which manifest G.o.d to men, and remind them of him, had given to Plato the surname of the precursor; on account of that theory of Ideas he was dear to St.

Augustine, and is invoked by Bossuet. It is by this same theory, wisely interpreted, and purified by the light of our age, that the new philosophy is attached to the tradition of great philosophies, and to that of Christianity.

The last problem that the science of the true presented is resolved:--we are in possession of the basis of absolute truths. G.o.d is substance, reason, supreme cause, and the unity of all these truths; G.o.d, and G.o.d alone, is to us the boundary beyond which we have nothing more to seek.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] See our work ent.i.tled, _Metaphysics of Aristotle_, 2d edition, _pa.s.sim_. In Aristotle himself, see especially _Metaphysics_, book vii., chap. xii., and book xiii., chap. ix.

[45] There are doubtless many other ways of arriving at G.o.d, as we shall successively see; but this is the way of metaphysics. We do not exclude any of the known and accredited proofs of the existence of G.o.d; but we begin with that which gives all the others. See further on, part ii., _G.o.d, the Principle of Beauty_, and part iii., _G.o.d, the Principle of the Good_, and the last lecture, which sums up the whole course.

[46] We have said a word on the Platonic theory of ideas, 1st Series, vol. iv., p. 461 and 522. See also, vol. ii. of the 2d Series, lecture 7, on _Plato and Aristotle_, especially 3d Series, vol. i., a few words on the _Language of the Theory of Ideas_, p. 121; our work on the _Metaphysics of Aristotle_, p. 48 and 149, and our translation of Plato, _pa.s.sim_.

[47] Aristotle first stated this; modern peripatetics have repeated it; and after them, all who have wished to decry the ancient philosophy, and philosophy in general, by giving the appearance of absurdity to its most ill.u.s.trious representative.

[48] See particularly p. 121 of the _Timaeus_, vol. xii. of our translation.

[49] _Republic_, book vi., vol. x. of our translation, p. 57.

[50] _Republic_, book vii., p. 20.

[51] _Phaedrus_, vol. vi., p. 51.

[52] _Phaedrus_, vol. vi., p. 55.

[53] Vol. xi., p. 261.

[54] Edit. Bened., vol. vi., p. 17: _Idex sunt formae quaedam princ.i.p.ales et rationes rerum stabiles atque incommutabiles, quae ipsae formatae non sunt ac per hoc aeternae ac semper eodem modo sese habentes, quae in divina intelligentia continentur_....