, and we are inclined
to think that neither we nor they could have been led along that path to
any satisfactory goal. For we have learned that differences of quantity
cannot pass into differences of quality, and that the mathematical
sciences can never rise above themselves into the sphere of our higher
thoughts, although they may sometimes furnish symbols and expressions
of them, and may train the mind in habits of abstraction and
self-concentration. The illusion which was natural to an ancient
philosopher has ceased to be an illusion to us. But if the process by
which we are supposed to arrive at the idea of good be really imaginary,
may not the idea itself be also a mere abstraction? We remark, first,
that in all ages, and especially in primitive philosophy, words such
as being, essence, unity, good, have exerted an extraordinary influence
over the minds of men. The meagreness or negativeness of their content
has been in an inverse ratio to their power. They have become the forms
under which all things were comprehended. There was a need or instinct
in the human soul which they satisfied; they were not ideas, but gods,
and to this new mythology the men of a later generation began to attach
the powers and associations of the elder deities.

The idea of good is one of those sacred words or forms of thought, which
were beginning to take the place of the old mythology. It meant unity,
in which all time and all existence were gathered up. It was the truth
of all things, and also the light in which they shone forth, and became
evident to intelligences human and divine. It was the cause of all
things, the power by which they were brought into being. It was the
universal reason divested of a human personality. It was the life
as well as the light of the world, all knowledge and all power were
comprehended in it. The way to it was through the mathematical sciences,
and these too were dependent on it. To ask whether God was the maker of
it, or made by it, would be like asking whether God could be conceived
apart from goodness, or goodness apart from God. The God of the Timaeus
is not really at variance with the idea of good; they are aspects of
the same, differing only as the personal from the impersonal, or the
masculine from the neuter, the one being the expression or language of
mythology, the other of philosophy.

This, or something like this, is the meaning of the idea of good as
conceived by Plato. Ideas of number, orde