HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF MYTH AND SCIENCE. 223 



and hence he was constrained by the unconscious 

 evolution of thought to affirm that an idea was present 

 in every relation, and thus the great, the little, the 

 less, the more, had their ideal representatives in the 

 general construction of his theory. But man is not 

 only an intellectual, but an active, sentient, living 

 being, tending to an object as an individual and a 

 social subject. So that he not only attains to the 

 understanding of ideal truth, but also of the good and 

 the beautiful. According to Plato, the Good and the 

 Beautiful must also necessarily be Ideas of a general 

 character, like those which embrace all ideal relations 

 whatever. Since they are universal, and due to the 

 innate impulse of thought towards concentric as- 

 cension, they must rank as the sum and apex 

 of ideas, so that the Good is emphatically the 

 Idea, or God. On turning to the world of sensations, 

 or of particular objects, ideas are the eternal model 

 (paradigm) according to which things are made ; these 

 are the images (idoli) of w r hich the others are the 

 imperfect copies (mlmesi). The world of sense is 

 itself only a symbol, an allegory, a figure. As in 

 the sensible world there is a scale of beings from the 

 lowest to the most perfect, that is to the material 

 universe, so in the sphere of intellect, the type of the 

 world, ideas are combined together by higher ideas, 

 and these again by others still higher, and so on to 

 the apex, the ultimate, supreme, omnipotent Idea, 

 the Good which includes and sums up the whole. 



