ll, he must operate rightly, wisely,
and well. The created universe must be an _image_, in the sphere of
sense, of the ideas which inhere in the reason of the great First Cause.

[Footnote 508: "Timaeus," ch. ix.]

[Footnote 509: "Phaedo," Sec. 105.]

"Let us declare," says Plato, "with what _motive_ the Creator hath
formed nature and the universe. He was _good_, and in the good no manner
of envy can, on any subject, possibly subsist. Exempt from envy, he had
wished that all things should, as far as possible, _resemble
himself_.... It was not, and is not to be allowed for the Supremely Good
to do any thing except what is most _excellent_ (kalliston)--most
_fair_, most _beautiful_."[510] Therefore, argues Plato, "inasmuch as
the world is the most beautiful of things, and its artificer the best of
causes, it is evident that the Creator and Father of the universe looked
to the _Eternal Model_(paradeigma), pattern, or plan,"[511] which lay in
his own mind. And thus this one, only-generated universe, is the _image_
(eikon) of that God who is the object of the intellect, the greatest,
the best, and the most perfect Being.[512]

[Footnote 510: "Timaeus," ch. x.]

[Footnote 511: Ibid., ch. ix.]

[Footnote 512: "Timaeus," ch. lxxiii.]

And then, furthermore, if this Supreme Intelligence, this Eternal Mind,
shall create another _mind_, it must, in a still higher degree, resemble
him. Inasmuch as it is a rational nature, it must, in a peculiar sense,
partake of the Divine characteristics. "The soul," says Plato, "is that
which most partakes of the _Divine_"[513] The soul must, therefore, have
native _ideas_ and sentiments which correlate it with the Divine
original. The ideas of substance and cause, of unity and identity, of
the infinite and perfect, must be mirrored there. As it is the
"offspring of God,"[514] it must bear some traces and lineaments of its
Divine parentage. That soul must be configured and correlated to those
principles of Order, Right, and Good which dwell in the Eternal Mind.
And because it has within itself the same ideas and laws, according to
which the great Architect built the universe, therefore it is capable of
knowing, and, in some degree, of comprehending, the intellectual system
of the universe. It apprehends the external world by a light which the
reason supplies. It interprets nature according to principles and laws
which God has inwrought within the very essence of the soul. "That which
impa