de as the poles asunder,
because he finds nothing between them. He passes abruptly from persons
to ideas and numbers, and from ideas and numbers to persons,--from the
heavens to man, from astronomy to physiology; he confuses, or rather
does not distinguish, subject and object, first and final causes, and
is dreaming of geometrical figures lost in a flux of sense. He contrasts
the perfect movements of the heavenly bodies with the imperfect
representation of them (Rep.), and he does not always require strict
accuracy even in applications of number and figure (Rep.). His mind
lingers around the forms of mythology, which he uses as symbols or
translates into figures of speech. He has no implements of observation,
such as the telescope or microscope; the great science of chemistry is
a blank to him. It is only by an effort that the modern thinker can
breathe the atmosphere of the ancient philosopher, or understand how,
under such unequal conditions, he seems in many instances, by a sort of
inspiration, to have anticipated the truth.

The influence with the Timaeus has exercised upon posterity is due
partly to a misunderstanding. In the supposed depths of this dialogue
the Neo-Platonists found hidden meanings and connections with the Jewish
and Christian Scriptures, and out of them they elicited doctrines quite
at variance with the spirit of Plato. Believing that he was inspired by
the Holy Ghost, or had received his wisdom from Moses, they seemed to
find in his writings the Christian Trinity, the Word, the Church,
the creation of the world in a Jewish sense, as they really found the
personality of God or of mind, and the immortality of the soul. All
religions and philosophies met and mingled in the schools of Alexandria,
and the Neo-Platonists had a method of interpretation which could
elicit any meaning out of any words. They were really incapable of
distinguishing between the opinions of one philosopher and another--
between Aristotle and Plato, or between the serious thoughts of Plato
and his passing fancies. They were absorbed in his theology and were
under the dominion of his name, while that which was truly great
and truly characteristic in him, his effort to realize and connect
abstractions, was not understood by them at all. Yet the genius of
Plato and Greek philosophy reacted upon the East, and a Greek element of
thought and language overlaid and partly reduced to order the chaos of
Orientalism. And kindred spirits,