PLATO. 59 



Whilst these schools, of the physical analysts and annihilators of 

 existence on the one hand, and of the metaphysical realists and assertors 

 of eternal relations on the other, were in full vogue and in daily colli- 

 sion, Plato paid his visit to Italy. He embraced the doctrines of Plato modi- 

 Heraclitus as far as they related to physics ; but the sceptical inferences JfneTthe m 

 which were attempted to be drawn from those doctrines, met in him systems of 

 with a decided and unwearied opponent. He adopted the notions of anTpytha- 

 the Pythagoreans as to the permanence of essences, but he modified s ras - 

 the doctrine considerably, by incorporating with it those notions of a 

 moral system and of an organizing Providence, which he had inherited 

 from Socrates, as part of the purer creed of Anaxagoras. In another 

 very important particular too, he qualified the metaphysical system of 

 Pythagoras : he considered the intellectual world as being in some 

 degree embodied in the visible one. Instead of inferring, as the 

 Pythagoreans had done, that things related were a semblance of the 

 abstract relations, he thought that they participated in those relations. 1 

 Some other differences subsisted between his notions and those of the 

 Pythagoreans, on the origin and the nature of numbers, which are 

 involved in considerable obscurities. 2 They seem to have merged 

 sensible objects in numbers, or in some manner to have identified them ; 

 he, on the contrary, insisted on their separate existence from numbers. 

 In these, as in many other particulars of ancient philosophy, it is to be 

 feared that we must be satisfied with glimpses of meaning, and must 

 be careful of introducing our own conjectures as expositions of what we 

 cannot clearly apprehend. But it may be remarked as singular, that 

 in one case Plato is represented as allowing a greater affinity between 

 sensible objects and their essences, than the Pythagoreans did ; and in 

 the other, that he made greater distinctions than they did between 

 sensible things and numbers, when it is admitted by all that the 

 Pythagoreans at least identified numbers with essences. 



From Italy, the general account is, that Plato proceeded to visit He visits 

 Egypt ; but we have no information which can be depended upon, sypt * 

 either as to the circumstances of his visit, or the length of his stay in 

 that country. Some accounts state that this journey was undertaken 

 for the sake of merchandise, and that Plato was there trafficking in 

 oil. 3 But nothing can be more improbable than such a circumstance. 

 Others relate that he there visited the priests, and was initiated in 

 their most profound mysteries. 4 But Plato himself acquaints us with 

 the reserve maintained in Egypt towards strangers with regard to the 

 peculiar institutions of the country ; and assures us, that so far from 

 their mysteries being accessible to foreigners, " the animals of the 



* O< f&tv yat.o Tltitfx'yo/juoi ftifiqfftv <ra OVTO, tyu,ff}v tivett TUV Koi&fAuv UXarwy ol fitQifyV) 

 TOVvofAtx, f&i<ra,fia/.&iy TJV (tlv roi y>t fJt-'iSiQv *j <rvv f^ifji^trtv %rt$ a.v ifa rut tl^uv dtyiTirav 

 iv xcivS, &>rt7v. Arist. Metaph. lib. i. c. 6. 



2 TaBs avr* <rou a.<nloou u; ivo$ $ua3ct voivffai, ro Vt drftigov lit ptyiiXou x-a.} ptixgov 

 rovT 'i^iav. xac,} ITI o p\v rovg xpifaov; -rapa. roc, ulfffnva,^ ci% apdftaus tUvai (fiaffiv O.VTOS, 

 <ra irpu.yp.ara,, xa.} TO, ^a.6n^.ce.rixac, p.&Ta.'Qu TOVTUV nv rihctffi. Arist. qua supra, 



3 Diogenes Laertius. .* Apuleius. Plutarch. 



