THE ONE IN THE MANY, AND THE MANY IN THE ONE. 123 



*0n account of our being in the Body, in this Hfe the perfect 

 fruition of IntelHgence (the full knowledge of The Ideas and of 

 GOD) can never be attained, although the philosopher accustoms 

 his soul to be as independent of the body as is possible, to with- 

 draw from communion with it and to act by herself — by pro- 

 cesses of pure thought, without aid of the senses ; Death is to be 

 welcomed by him as the realisation of the philosopher's dream, 

 the fulfilment of that intellectual enfranchisement which by a 

 hfe-long struggle he has in only scanty measure attained. How, 

 then, can he fail to be of good cheer when the hour arrives of his 

 release from the close confines of his bodily prison into the 

 wide pure air of free intellectual life ? The virtuous philosopher 

 is sure of his well-being. In his Hfe, and in the manner of his 

 death, Socrates himself exempUfied the virtuous philosopher. 



0 Our consideration of the remarkable theory which I have 

 ^: been bringing before you may well lead us to marvel that Plato's 

 I" idea of GOD, although falhng far short, should be so free from 

 c error, and to so great an extent approximate to the Biblical 

 ^ revelation ; and that he should have believed the architect and 

 ^ artificer of the universe to be a Person at once Divine and human. 



Very noticeable also is his insistence that the things which are 

 ^ seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 

 ^ We ask : How did he gain knowledge of these truths ? Some- 

 thing is attributable to the circumstance that, after the death 

 ^ of his master Socrates, Plato left Athens and travelled for some 

 years, visiting Egypt and other countries. He would thus 

 °- probably come in contact with Jews, by whom his attention 

 W (that of an earnest truth-seeker) might be directed to the Old 



1 Testament Scriptures. Without doubt, however, a fuller explana- 

 ^ tion is in the fact, which centuries afterwards was to be preached 



to Plato's keen-witted countrymen by the great Apostle, that 

 ^ The Good One, looking down from Heaven, has in HIS Providence 

 S arranged things with the purpose and desire that men should 

 seek HIM if haply they might feel after HIM in Whom they 

 live and move and have their being, and find HIM. Plato was 

 such a seeker and feeler-after ; to him, as to all others, the 

 result followed the inflexible law — " He that seeketh findeth, 

 and to him that knocketh it shall loQ opened." 



Plato's wonderful theory, although enriched with so much 

 that is true and beautiful, appears to me to suffer from a mis- 

 taken supposition as to what really constitutes an Idea or 



* Socrates speaks here. 



