has its
ground and root in a higher idea, which is _unhypothetical_ and
_absolute_--an idea which needs no other supposition for its
explanation, and which is, itself, needful to the explanation of all
existence--even the idea of an _absolute_ and _perfect Being_, in whose
mind the ideas of absolute truth, and beauty, and goodness inhere, and
in whose eternity they can only be regarded as eternal.[588] Thus do the
"ideas of reason" not only cast a bridge across the abyss that separates
the sensible and the ideal world, but they also carry us beyond the
limits of our personal consciousness, and discover to us a realm of real
Being, which is the foundation, and cause, and explanation of the
phenomenal world that appears around us and within us.

[Footnote 586: Alcinous, "Doctrines of Plato," p. 262.]

[Footnote 587: "Timaeus," ch. ix.]

[Footnote 588: Maurice's "Ancient Philosophy," p. 149.]

This passage from psychology to ontology is not achieved _per saltum_,
or effected by any arbitrary or unwarrantable assumption. There are
principles revealed in the centre of our consciousness, whose regular
development carry us beyond the limits of consciousness, and attain to
the knowledge of actual being. The absolute principles of _causality_
and _substance_, of _intentionality_ and _unity_, unquestionably give us
the absolute Being. Indeed the absolute truth _that every idea supposes
a being in which it resides_, and which is but another form of the law
or principle of substance, viz., _that every quality supposes a
substance or being in which it inheres_, is adequate to carry us from
Idea to Being. "There is not a single cognition which does not suggest
to us the notion of existence, and there is not an unconditional and
absolute truth which does not necessarily imply an absolute and
unconditional Being."[589]

[Footnote 589: Cousin's "Elements of Psychology," p. 506.]

This, then, is the dialectic of Plato. Instead of losing himself amid
the endless variety of particular phenomena, he would search for
principles and laws, and from thence ascend to the great Legislator, the
_First Principle of all Principles_. Instead of stopping at the
relations of sensible objects to the general ideas with which they are
commingled, he will pass to their _eternal Paradigms_--from the just
thing to the idea of absolute justice, from the particular good to the
absolute good, from beautiful things to the absolute beauty, and thence
to th