e ultimate reality--_the absolute Being_. By the realization of the
lower idea, embodied in the forms of the visible universe and in the
necessary laws of thought, he sought to rise to the higher idea, in its
pure and abstract form--the _Supreme Idea_, containing in itself all
other ideas--the _One Intelligence_ which unites the universe in a
harmonious whole. "The Dialectic faculty proceeds from hypothesis to an
unhypothetical principle.... It uses hypotheses as steps, and
starting-points, in order to proceed from thence to the _absolute_. The
Intuitive Reason takes hold of the First Principle of the Universe, and
avails itself of all the connections and relations of that principle. It
ascends from idea to idea, until it has reached the Supreme Idea"--the
_Absolute Good_--that is, _God_.[590]

[Footnote 590: "Republic," bk. vi. ch. xx. and xxi.]

We are thus brought, in the course of our examination of the Platonic
method, to the _results_ obtained by this method--or, in other words, to

III. THE PLATONIC ONTOLOGY.

The grand object of all philosophic inquiry in ancient Greece was to
attain to the knowledge of real Being--that Being which is permanent,
unchangeable, and eternal. It had proceeded on the intuitive conviction,
that beneath all the endless diversity of the universe there must be a
principle of _unity_--below all fleeting appearances there must be a
permanent _substance_--beyond all this everlasting flow and change, this
beginning and end of finite existence, there must be an eternal Being,
which is the _cause_, and which contains, in itself, the _reason_ of the
order, and harmony, and beauty, and excellency which pervades the
universe. And it had perpetually asked what is this permanent,
unchangeable, and eternal substance or being?

Plato had assiduously labored at the solution of this problem. The
object of his dialectic was "to lead upward the soul to the knowledge of
real being,"[591] and the conclusions to which he attained may be summed
up as follows:

1st. _Beneath all_ SENSIBLE _phenomena there is an unchangeable
subject-matter, the mysterious substratum of the world of sense, which
he calls the receptacle (ipodoche) the nurse (tithene) of all that is
produced_.[592]

It is this "substratum or physical groundwork" which gives a reality and
definiteness to the evanescent phantoms of sense, for, in their
ceaseless change, _they_ can not justify any title whatever. It alone
can be styled "_thi