82 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



creatures. 1 - He rebukes the poets for creating or giving popularity to 

 the idlest and most impure fictions of the ancient mythology. If 

 Plato considered the gods of his country as having permanent existence, 

 as embodied powers of nature and tutelary divinities, or as having had 

 a mortal existence, as departed heroes and benefactors of mankind, he 

 Did he be- at least did not, at the same time, consider that beings so superior 

 theism n ? p0ly ~ were or had been capable of the grossest crimes and of the greatest 

 inconsistency of character. But we confess it seems to us most 

 probable that Plato entirely disbelieved the whole mass of the current 

 fictions ; and the difference of style observable in his writings upon 

 this subject, so distinguishable from his solemn and earnest manner 

 when discoursing on the Supreme divinity, seems strongly to confirm 

 our opinion of his disbelief in the polytheism of his countrymen even 

 in a modified sense. 2 



His opinions The art of communicating knowledge, or the science of language 

 iUietonc. and an d reasoning, is intimately connected with philosophy, or the art of 

 acquiring knowledge. As knowledge, according to Plato's doctrine, 

 consisted in rejecting accidental particulars, and in contemplating 

 those essences or general principles which always existed in the mind, 

 but which only required the suggestion of particular occasions to 

 unfold and develop them at large ; so he considered the art of com- 

 municating knowledge to consist in exciting the power of abstraction, 

 and in awakening in the understanding those inherent but dormant 

 notions which only require proper excitement to become expanded in 

 their due proportions. As the objects of knowledge can only be 

 clearly distinguished from one another, by separating their permanent 

 natures from their accidental circumstances and combinations, he con- 

 sidered definitions as the grand instrument for communicating know- 

 ledge ; since, by means of them, we can limit the subject of inquiry 

 to a distinct point; and by words defined and adhered to in the sense 

 given as a definition, can at once explain what we consider the perma- 

 nent and inherent properties of anything, and can also converse of them 

 as separated from their accidental adjuncts. 8 



With men, indeed, of sound understandings and candid tempers, 

 plain and direct reasoning is the most proper mode of proceeding, 

 and knowledge is best communicated by simple methods, and with as 

 little of the circuits and perplexities of language as the nature of the 

 subject will admit. But with different tempers, and on different 

 occasions, other methods of communicating knowledge, and leading 



1 De Legg. lib. x. and lib. xii. 



2 " Sciendum est tamen non in omnem disputationem philosophos fabulosa ad- 

 mittere, sed his uti solent cum vel de animal, vel de aeriis, aetheriisve potestatibus 

 vel de cseteris Dis loquuntur : caeterum cum ad summum et principem omnium 

 Deum tractatus se audet attollere, nihil fabulosum penitus attingunt." Macrobius 

 in Somn. Scip. lib. i. c. 2. 



8 BouZ.ii ovv ivtitv'Si o.f&fuptQa. tVKrxoffovvTtf tx rtjg iw6vnx.s [tiSobttv ; it'bos ya.^ fov TI 

 iv txectrrov iluQupiv rihtrfai vrtoi 'ixourTOt ru woXXa eif TKUTOV ovopa iTitpigofttv. De 

 Republ. x. p. 596. 



