nces, real
beings.----According to Plato, God and matter existed from all eternity.
Before the creation of the world, matter had in itself a principle of
motion, but without end or laws: it is this principle which Plato calls
the irrational soul of the world, because, according to his doctrine,
every spontaneous and original principle of motion is called soul. God
wished to impress form upon matter, that is to say, 1. To mould matter,
and make it into a body; 2. To regulate its motion, and subject it to
some end and to certain laws. The Deity, in this operation, could not
act but according to the ideas existing in his intelligence: their union
filled this, and formed the ideal type of the world. It is this ideal
world, this divine intelligence, existing with God from all eternity,
and called by Plato which he is supposed to personify, to
substantialize; while an attentive examination is sufficient to convince
us that he has never assigned it an existence external to the Deity,
(hors de la Divinite,) and that he considered the as the aggregate of
the ideas of God, the divine understanding in its relation to the world.
The contrary opinion is irreconcilable with all his philosophy: thus he
says that to the idea of the Deity is essentially united that of
intelligence, of a logos. He would thus have admitted a double logos;
one inherent in the Deity as an attribute, the other independently
existing as a substance. He affirms that the intelligence, the principle
of order cannot exist but as an attribute of a soul, the principle of
motion and of life, of which the nature is unknown to us. How, then,
according to this, could he consider the logos as a substance endowed
with an independent existence? In other places, he explains it by these
two words, knowledge, science, which signify the attributes of the
Deity. When Plato separates God, the ideal archetype of the world and
matter, it is to explain how, according to his system, God has
proceeded, at the creation, to unite the principle of order which he had
within himself, his proper intelligence, the principle of motion, to the
principle of motion, the irrational soul which was in matter. When he
speaks of the place occupied by the ideal world, it is to designate the
divine intelligence, which is its cause. Finally, in no part of his
writings do we find a true personification of the pretended beings of
which he is said to have formed a trinity: and if this personification
exis