id God make the world? Like man, he must have a purpose;
and his purpose is the diffusion of that goodness or good which he
himself is. The term 'goodness' is not to be understood in this passage
as meaning benevolence or love, in the Christian sense of the term, but
rather law, order, harmony, like the idea of good in the Republic. The
ancient mythologers, and even the Hebrew prophets, had spoken of the
jealousy of God; and the Greek had imagined that there was a Nemesis
always attending the prosperity of mortals. But Plato delights to think
of God as the author of order in his works, who, like a father, lives
over again in his children, and can never have too much of good or
friendship among his creatures. Only, as there is a certain remnant of
evil inherent in matter which he cannot get rid of, he detaches himself
from them and leaves them to themselves, that he may be guiltless of
their faults and sufferings.

Between the ideal and the sensible Plato interposes the two natures of
time and space. Time is conceived by him to be only the shadow or
image of eternity which ever is and never has been or will be, but is
described in a figure only as past or future. This is one of the great
thoughts of early philosophy, which are still as difficult to our minds
as they were to the early thinkers; or perhaps more difficult, because
we more distinctly see the consequences which are involved in such
an hypothesis. All the objections which may be urged against Kant's
doctrine of the ideality of space and time at once press upon us. If
time is unreal, then all which is contained in time is unreal--the
succession of human thoughts as well as the flux of sensations; there is
no connecting link between (Greek) and (Greek). Yet, on the other hand,
we are conscious that knowledge is independent of time, that truth
is not a thing of yesterday or tomorrow, but an 'eternal now.' To the
'spectator of all time and all existence' the universe remains at rest.
The truths of geometry and arithmetic in all their combinations are
always the same. The generations of men, like the leaves of the forest,
come and go, but the mathematical laws by which the world is governed
remain, and seem as if they could never change. The ever-present image
of space is transferred to time--succession is conceived as extension.
(We remark that Plato does away with the above and below in space, as
he has done away with the absolute existence of past and future.) Th