an imitation in the
tenth. The line may be regarded as reaching from unity to infinity, and
is divided into two unequal parts, and subdivided into two more;
each lower sphere is the multiplication of the preceding. Of the four
faculties, faith in the lower division has an intermediate position (cp.
for the use of the word faith or belief, (Greek), Timaeus), contrasting
equally with the vagueness of the perception of shadows (Greek) and the
higher certainty of understanding (Greek) and reason (Greek).

The difference between understanding and mind or reason (Greek) is
analogous to the difference between acquiring knowledge in the parts
and the contemplation of the whole. True knowledge is a whole, and is
at rest; consistency and universality are the tests of truth. To this
self-evidencing knowledge of the whole the faculty of mind is supposed
to correspond. But there is a knowledge of the understanding which
is incomplete and in motion always, because unable to rest in
the subordinate ideas. Those ideas are called both images and
hypotheses--images because they are clothed in sense, hypotheses because
they are assumptions only, until they are brought into connexion with
the idea of good.

The general meaning of the passage, 'Noble, then, is the bond which
links together sight...And of this kind I spoke as the intelligible...'
so far as the thought contained in it admits of being translated
into the terms of modern philosophy, may be described or explained as
follows:--There is a truth, one and self-existent, to which by the help
of a ladder let down from above, the human intelligence may ascend. This
unity is like the sun in the heavens, the light by which all things are
seen, the being by which they are created and sustained. It is the
IDEA of good. And the steps of the ladder leading up to this highest or
universal existence are the mathematical sciences, which also contain
in themselves an element of the universal. These, too, we see in a new
manner when we connect them with the idea of good. They then cease to
be hypotheses or pictures, and become essential parts of a higher truth
which is at once their first principle and their final cause.

We cannot give any more precise meaning to this remarkable passage, but
we may trace in it several rudiments or vestiges of thought which are
common to us and to Plato: such as (1) the unity and correlation of the
sciences, or rather of science, for in Plato's time they were