ities, but regarded them only as we regard angels
and archangels, saints and prophets; as finite beings, above man, but
infinitely below the Supreme Being. Reverence for such beings is quite
consistent with the purest monotheism.

In Plato, says Rixner[248] the two polar tendencies of Greek philosophy
were harmonized, and realism and idealism brought into accord. The school
of realism recognized time, variety, motion, multiplicity, and nature; but
lost substance, unity, eternity, and spirit. The other, the ideal Eleatic
school, recognized unity, but lost variety, saw eternity, but ignored
time, accepted being, but omitted life and movement.

The three views may be thus compared:--

Italian Philosophy, Plato. Ionian or Asiatic Atomic.
or Eleatic.
The One. The One in All. The All.
Unity. Unity and Variety. Variety.
Being. Life. Motion.
Pantheism. Divine in Nature. Naturalism.
Substance. Substance and Manifestation. Phenomena.

The philosophy of Plato was the scientific completion of that of Socrates.
Socrates took his intellectual departure from man, and inferred nature and
God. Plato assumed God, and inferred nature and man. He made goodness and
nature godlike, by making God the substance in each. His was a divine
philosophy, since he referred all facts theoretically and practically to
God as the ground of their being.

The style of Plato singularly combined analysis and synthesis, exact
definition with poetic life. His magnificent intellect aimed at uniting
precision in details with universal comprehension.[249]

Plato, as regards his method of thought, was a strict and determined
transcendentalist. He declared philosophy to be the science of
unconditioned being, and asserted that this was known to the soul by its
intuitive reason, which is the organ of all philosophic insight. The
reason perceives substance, the understanding only phenomena. Being
[Greek: to on], which is the reality in all actuality, is in the ideas or
thoughts of God; and nothing exists or appears outwardly, except by the
force of this indwelling idea. The WORD is the true expression of the
nature of every object; for each has its divine and natural name, beside
its accidental human appellation. Philosophy is the recollection of what
the soul has seen of things and their names.