26 



ON THE ELEMENTARY AND CONSTITUENT 



From harmony, from heav'nly harmony, > 

 1 This universal frame began. 



When nature underneath a heap 

 Of jarring atoms lay, 

 And could not heave her head, 

 The tuneful voice was heard from high. 



Arise, ye more than dead ! 

 Then hot and cold, and moist and dry, 

 In order to their stations leap, 

 And music's power obey. 

 From harmony, from heav'nly harmony, 

 This universal frame began ; 

 From harmony to harmony 

 Through all the compass of the notes it ran. 

 The diapason closing full in man. 



What Pythagoras thus called numbers Plato denominated ideas^ a term 

 which has, hence, descended to our own day, and is on every one's lips, 

 although in a different sense from what it originally imported. The reason 

 or wisdom of the great First Cause, and which he denominates the logos of 

 God, 0 Aayos, or o Xoyia-fMg rov ©fot/, and not unfrequently Ajjft/oy^ya? (De- 

 miurgus), Plato describes as a distinct principle from the original Cause or 

 Deity himself, from whom this efficient or operative cause, this divine wis- 

 dom or logos, emanates, and has eternally emanated, as light and heat from 

 the sun. Thus emanating, he conceived it to be the immediate region or 

 reservoir of ideas or intellectual fot-ms, of the archetypes or patterns of 

 things, subsisting by themselves as real beings — recovra^ ovret — in this their 

 eternal and original well-spring ; and the union of which with the whole, 

 or any portion of primary or incorporeal matter, immediately produces 

 palpable forms, and renders them objects of contemplation and science to 

 the external senses.* 



Jt4s^ hence, obvious that Plato contended for a triad or trinity of sub- 

 stances in the creation ©f the visible universe — God, divine wisdom, or the 

 eternal source of intellectual forms or ideas, and incorporeal matter. And 

 it is on this account that several of the earliest Christian fathers, who, as I 

 have already obserred, had been educated in the Platonic school, and had 

 imbibed his notions, regarded this doctrine as of divine origin ; and endea- 

 voured, though preposterously, to blend the trinity of Plato, and that of the 

 Christian scripture, into one common dogma : an attempt which has been 

 occasionally revived in modern times, especially by Cudworth and Ogilvie, 

 with great profundity of learning and great shrewdness of argument, but, at 

 the same time, with as little success as in the first ages of Christianity. 



It is to this theory, which, indeed, is highly fitted for poetry, and much 

 better so than for dry, dialectic discussion, Akenside beautifully alludes 

 in the first book of his " Pleasures of Imagination :" — 



I Ere (he radiant sun 



Sprang from the east, or, mid the vault of night 



The moon suspended her serener lamp ; 



Ere mountains, woods, or streams adorn'd the globe, 



Or Wisdom taught the sons of men her lore ; 



Then liv'd th' Eternal One ; then, deep retir'd 



In his unfathom'd essence, view'd the forms, 



The forms eternal of created things ; 



The radiant sun, the moon's nocturnal lamp, 



The mountains, woods, and streams, the rolling globe, 



And Wisdom's mien celestial. From the first 



Of days, on them his love divine he fix'd. 



His admiration ; till, in time complete, 



What he admir'd and lov'd his vital smile 



* Plac. PLil. lib. i. cap. x. Tim. lib. c. 



