e ideal
or divine government of the world we can form no true or adequate
conception; and this our mixed state of life, in which we are partly
left to ourselves, but not wholly deserted by the gods, may contain some
higher elements of good and knowledge than could have existed in the
days of innocence under the rule of Cronos. So we may venture slightly
to enlarge a Platonic thought which admits of a further application to
Christian theology. Here are suggested also the distinctions between
God causing and permitting evil, and between his more and less immediate
government of the world.

II. The dialectical interest of the Statesman seems to contend in
Plato's mind with the political; the dialogue might have been
designated by two equally descriptive titles--either the 'Statesman,' or
'Concerning Method.' Dialectic, which in the earlier writings of Plato
is a revival of the Socratic question and answer applied to definition,
is now occupied with classification; there is nothing in which he takes
greater delight than in processes of division (compare Phaedr.); he
pursues them to a length out of proportion to his main subject, and
appears to value them as a dialectical exercise, and for their own sake.
A poetical vision of some order or hierarchy of ideas or sciences has
already been floating before us in the Symposium and the Republic. And
in the Phaedrus this aspect of dialectic is further sketched out,
and the art of rhetoric is based on the division of the characters
of mankind into their several classes. The same love of divisions is
apparent in the Gorgias. But in a well-known passage of the Philebus
occurs the first criticism on the nature of classification. There we
are exhorted not to fall into the common error of passing from unity to
infinity, but to find the intermediate classes; and we are reminded that
in any process of generalization, there may be more than one class to
which individuals may be referred, and that we must carry on the process
of division until we have arrived at the infima species.

These precepts are not forgotten, either in the Sophist or in the
Statesman. The Sophist contains four examples of division, carried on
by regular steps, until in four different lines of descent we detect
the Sophist. In the Statesman the king or statesman is discovered by
a similar process; and we have a summary, probably made for the first
time, of possessions appropriated by the labour of man, which are
dist