always presented by him in a highly mythical dress. Now of these
mythical representations he remarks in the "Phaedo" (Sec. 145) that "no man
in his senses would dream of insisting _that they correspond to the
reality_, but that, the soul having been shown to be immortal, this, or
something like this, is true of individual souls or their habitations."
If, as in the opinions of the ablest critics, "the Laws" is to be placed
amongst the last and maturest of Plato's writings, the evidence is
conclusive that whatever may have been his earlier opinions, he did not
entertain the doctrine of "Metempsychosis" in his riper years. But when,
on the one hand, the soul shall remain having an intercourse with divine
virtue, it becomes divine pre-eminently; and pre-eminently, after having
been conveyed to a _place_ entirely holy, it is changed for the better;
but when it acts in a contrary manner, it has, under contrary
circumstances, placed its existence in some _unholy spot_.

_This is the judgment of the gods, who hold Olympus._

"O thou young man," [know] "that the person who has become more wicked,
_departs to the more wicked souls;_ but he who has become better, to the
better both in life and in all deaths, to do and suffer what is fitting
for the like."--"Laws," bk. x. ch. xii. and xiii.]

4. _Beyond all finite existences and secondary causes, all laws, ideas,
and principles, there is an_ INTELLIGENCE _or_ MIND, _the First
Principle of all Principles, the Supreme Idea on which all other ideas
are grounded; the Monarch and Lawgiver of the universe, the ultimate
Substance from which all other things derive their being and essence,
the First and efficient Cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty,
and excellency, and goodness, which pervades the universe, who is called
by way of pre-eminence and excellence the Supreme Good_, THE GOD (o
Theos), "_the God over all_," (o epi pasi Theos).

_This_ SUPREME MIND,[619] Plato taught, is incorporeal,[620]
unchangeable,[621] infinite,[622] absolutely perfect,[623] essentially
good,[624] unoriginated,[625] and eternal.[626] He is "the Father, and
Architect, and Maker of the Universe,"[627] "the efficient Cause of all
things."[628] "the Monarch and Ruler of the world,"[629] "the sovereign
Mind that orders all things, and pervades all things,"[630] "the sole
Principle of all things,"[631] and "the Measure of all things,"[632] He
is "the Beginning of all truth,"[633] "the Fountain of