" In the same manner as the sun, which is the visible image of the
good, reigns over the world, in that it illumes and vivifies it; so the
Supreme Good, of which the sun is only the work, reigns over the
intelligible world, in that it gives birth to it by virtue of its
inexhaustible fruitfulness.[642] _The Supreme Good is_ GOD _himself_,
and he is designated "the good" because this term seems most fittingly
to express his essential character and essence.[643] It is towards this
superlative perfection that the reason lifts itself; it is towards this
infinite beauty the heart aspires. "Marvellous Beauty!" exclaims Plato;
"eternal, uncreated, imperishable beauty, free from increase and
diminution... beauty which has nothing sensible, nothing corporeal, as
hands or face: which does not reside in any being different from itself,
in the earth, or the heavens, or in any other thing, but which exists
_eternally and absolutely in itself, and by itself;_ beauty of which
every other beauty partakes, without their birth or destruction bringing
to it the least increase or diminution."[644] The absolute being--God,
is the last reason, the ultimate foundation, the complete ideal of all
beauty. God is, _par excellent_, the Beautiful.

[Footnote 638: Thompson's "Laws of Thought," p. 119.]

[Footnote 639: Cousin, "Lectures on the History of Philosophy," vol. i.
p. 415. "There is no quintessential metaphysics which can prevail
against common sense, and if such be the Platonic theory of ideas,
Aristotle was right in opposing it. But such a theory is only a chimera
which Aristotle created for the purpose of combating it."--"The True,
the Beautiful, and the Good," p. 77.]

[Footnote 640: "Republic," bk. vii. ch. iii.]

[Footnote 641: "Ibid.," bk. vi. ch. xviii. and xix.]

[Footnote 642: "Republic," bk. vii. ch. iii.]

[Footnote 642: Ritter's "History of Ancient Philosophy," vol. ii. p.
275.]

[Footnote 644: "Banquet," Sec. 35. See Cousin, "The True, the Beautiful,
and the Good," Lecture IV., also Lecture VII. pp. 150-153; Denis,
"Histoire des Theories et Idees Morales dans l'Antiquite," vol. i. p.
149.]

God is therefore, with Plato, _the First Principle of all Principles;_
the Divine energy or power is the _efficient cause_, the Divine beauty
the _formal cause_, and the Divine goodness the _final cause_ of all
existence.

_The eternal unity of the principles of Order, Goodness, and Truth, in
an ultimate reality--the_ ETERNAL MIND