THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



marked, they were closely united in maintaining a 

 dualistic world. ^^ And they both were fundamentally 

 concerned with the problem of the reality of ideas 

 and in seeking a final cause for phenomena. They 

 both were much influenced by Anaxagoras and adopt- 

 ed his postulate of the nous^ which they enlarged 

 into the belief of a divine and spiritual ruler of the 

 universe who created and ruled all things according 

 to a standard of justice and righteousness. The cer- 

 tainty of knowledge of the Demiurgos was given to 

 man by his possession of a divine spirit which was 

 joined to his body at his creation, and which gave 

 him an absolute but incomplete knowledge of virtue. 

 His soul enabled him to appreciate the divine stan- 

 dards of right and wrong as fundamental realities 

 and not as the outgrowth of social custom. 



Plato, following the example of his master, Socra- 

 tes, is only slightly concerned with the objective 

 world and makes few references in his Dialogues to 

 its phenomena and laws. He is mainly engaged in the 

 discussion of the nature of God and in attempting 

 to establish the laws of right and wrong. Only in his 

 later life, — and perhaps then in answer to the crit- 

 icism that while he had discussed God, man, and the 

 State, theoretically, he had nowhere shown how man 



11 While it is true that Plato has been classed by Zeller as a 

 monist because of his belief in the reality of ideas, we are safe in 

 holding that Zeller, who was an Hegelian, cannot be trusted in his 

 interpretation of Plato. Because of Plato's absolute separation of 

 the nature of organic and inorganic things, and of spirit and body, 

 there can be no doubt that he was truly a dualist, 



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