228 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



morphic idol, was not only regarded as a living but 

 as a causative subject ; the same power was likewise 

 infused into the Ideas, and they were held to be causes 

 of particular things, of which they were the earlier 

 and eternal type. Thus the myth in the Platonic 

 Ideas became scientific, but it continued to be a myth ; 

 the substance varied, but the form was the same. 

 The objective phenomena of the world had first been 

 personified, or their fanciful images were assumed to 

 be objective ; now the world of reason was personified, 

 and mythology became intellectual instead of cosmic. 

 Those who opposed Plato's theory of ideas said 

 that he realized abstractions, or personified ideas ; 

 but no one, as I think, perceived the natural process 

 which led him to do so, nor explained the faculty 1 > v 

 which he was necessarily influenced. Plato's theory 

 was only an ultimate phase of the evolution of the 

 vague and primitive animation of the world, which 

 had passed through fetishism, polytheism, and the 

 worship of the elements of nature, and had reached 

 the entification and subjectivity of ideas, which was 

 also attained by natural science, after passing through 

 its mythical envelopment. We have noted the causes, 

 which in the case of the earlier philosophers happened 

 to be objective, while they were in Plato's case sub- 

 jective, owing to the character and temperament of 

 his mind ; both conduced to the development and 

 aesthetic splendour of this teaching among the Greeks. 

 The teaching of Plato, which had more or less influ- 



