Chapter XVI.—Plato; Threefold Classification of Principles; His Idea of God; Different Opinions Regarding His Theology and Psychology; His Eschatology and System of Metempsychosis; His Ethical Doctrines; Notions on the Free-Will Question.
Plato (lays down) that there are three originating
principles of the universe, (namely) God, and matter, and exemplar; God
as the Maker and Regulator of this universe, and the Being who
exercises providence over it; but matter, as that which underlies all
(phenomena), which (matter) he styles both receptive and a nurse, out
of the arrangement of which proceeded the four elements of which the
world consists; (I mean) fire, air, earth, water, from which all the
rest of what are denominated concrete substances, as well as animals
and plants, have been formed. And that the exemplar, which he
likewise calls ideas, is the intelligence of the Deity, to which, as to
an image in the soul, the Deity attending, fabricated all things. God, he says, is both incorporeal and shapeless, and comprehensible by wise men solely; whereas matter is body potentially, but with potentiality not as yet passing into action, for being itself without form and without quality, by assuming forms and qualities, it became body. That matter, therefore, is an originating principle, and coeval with the Deity, and that in this respect the world is uncreated. For (Plato) affirms that (the world) was made out of it. And that (the attribute of) imperishableness necessarily belongs to (literally “follows”) that which is uncreated. So far forth, however, as body is supposed to be compounded out of both many qualities and ideas, so far forth it is both created and perishable. But some of the followers of Plato mingled both of these, employing some such example as the following: That as a waggon can always continue undestroyed, though undergoing partial repairs from time to time, so that even the parts each in turn perish, yet itself remains always complete; so after this manner the world also, although in parts it perishes, yet the things that are removed, being repaired, and equivalents for them being introduced, it remains eternal.
Some maintain that Plato asserts the Deity to be
one, ingenerable and incorruptible, as he says in The Laws:
“God, therefore, as the ancient account has it, possesses both
the beginning, and end, and middle of all things.” Thus he
shows God to be one, on account of His having pervaded all
things. Others, however, maintain that Plato affirms the
existence of many gods indefinitely, when he uses these words: “God of gods, of whom I am both the Creator and Father.” But others say that he speaks of a definite number of deities in the following passage: “Therefore the mighty Jupiter, wheeling his swift chariot in heaven;” and when he enumerates the offspring of the children of heaven and earth. But others assert that (Plato) constituted the gods as generable; and on account of their having been produced, that altogether they were subject to the necessity of corruption, but that on account of the will of God they are immortal, (maintaining this) in the passage already quoted, where, to the words, “God of gods, of whom I am Creator and Father,” he adds, “indissoluble through the fiat of My will;” so that if (God) were disposed that these should be dissolved, they would easily be dissolved.
