3.]

[Footnote 880: Id., ib., bk. i. ch. iv. Secs. 17, 18.]

[Footnote 881: Id., ib., bk. i. ch. i. Sec. 19.]

[Footnote 882: Ritter's "History of Ancient Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 63;
Butler's "Lectures on Ancient Philosophy," vol. i. p. 359.]

It was, however, the matured dialectic of Plato which gave the
death-blow to polytheism. "Plato, the poet-philosopher, sacrificed Homer
himself to monotheism. We may measure the energy of his conviction by
the greatness of the sacrifice. He could not pardon the syren whose
songs had fascinated Greece, the fresh brilliant poetry that had
inspired its religion. He crowned it with flowers, but banished it,
because it had lowered the religious ideal of conscience." He was
sensible of the beauty of the Homeric fables, but he was also keenly
alive to their religious falsehood, and therefore he excluded the poets
from his ideal republic. In the education of youth, he would forbid
parents and teachers repeating "the stories which Hesiod and Homer and
the other poets told us." And after instancing a number of these stories
"which deserve the gravest condemnation," he enjoins that God must be
represented as he is in reality. "God," says he, "is, beyond all else,
good in reality, and therefore so to be represented;" "he can not do
evil, or be the cause of evil;" "he is of simple essence, and can not
change, or be the subject of change;" "there is no imperfection in the
beauty or goodness of God;" "he is a God of truth, and can not lie;" "he
is a being of perfect simplicity and truth in deed and word."[883] The
reader can not fail to recognize the close resemblance between the
language of Plato and the language of inspiration.

The theistic conception, in Plato, reaches the highest purity and
spirituality. God is "_the Supreme Mind_," "incorporeal,"
"unchangeable," "infinite," "absolutely perfect," "essentially good,"
"unoriginated and eternal." He is "the Father and Maker of the world,"
"the efficient Cause of all things," "the Monarch and Ruler of the
world," "the Sovereign Mind that orders all things," and "pervades all
things." He is "the sole principle of all things," "the beginning of all
truth," "the fountain of all law and justice," "the source of all order
and beauty;" in short, He is "the beginning, middle, and end of all
things."[884]

[Footnote 883: "Republic," bk. ii. Secs. 18-21.]

[Footnote 884: See _ante_, ch. xi. pp. 377, 378, where the references to
Plato's writings