tence of evil, which in one solitary passage, remarkable
for being inconsistent with his general system, Plato explains,
after the Magian fashion, by a good and evil spirit (compare Theaet.,
Statesman). This passage is also remarkable for being at variance with
the general optimism of the Tenth Book--not 'all things are ordered by
God for the best,' but some things by a good, others by an evil spirit.

The Tenth Book of the Laws presents a picture of the state of belief
among the Greeks singularly like that of the world in which we live.
Plato is disposed to attribute the incredulity of his own age to several
causes. First, to the bad effect of mythological tales, of which he
retains his disapproval; but he has a weak side for antiquity, and is
unwilling, as in the Republic, wholly to proscribe them. Secondly, he
remarks the self-conceit of a newly-fledged generation of philosophers,
who declare that the sun, moon, and stars, are earth and stones only;
and who also maintain that the Gods are made by the laws of the state.
Thirdly, he notes a confusion in the minds of men arising out of their
misinterpretation of the appearances of the world around them: they do
not always see the righteous rewarded and the wicked punished. So in
modern times there are some whose infidelity has arisen from doubts
about the inspiration of ancient writings; others who have been made
unbelievers by physical science, or again by the seemingly political
character of religion; while there is a third class to whose minds the
difficulty of 'justifying the ways of God to man' has been the chief
stumblingblock. Plato is very much out of temper at the impiety of some
of his contemporaries; yet he is determined to reason with the victims,
as he regards them, of these illusions before he punishes them. His
answer to the unbelievers is twofold: first, that the soul is prior to
the body; secondly, that the ruler of the universe being perfect has
made all things with a view to their perfection. The difficulties
arising out of ancient sacred writings were far less serious in the age
of Plato than in our own.

We too have our popular Epicureanism, which would allow the world to go
on as if there were no God. When the belief in Him, whether of ancient
or modern times, begins to fade away, men relegate Him, either in theory
or practice, into a distant heaven. They do not like expressly to deny
God when it is more convenient to forget Him; and so the theory