pressive and mysterious-he found Myth thus ready to his hand, and he took it up, and used it in an original way for a philosophical purpose, and transformed it as the Genius of Sculpture transformed the góava of Daedalus.

Further remarks on the a priori in conduct and knowledge as set forth by means of the mythological deduction of Faculties will be best deferred till we come to the Phaedrus Myth; but some general observations on the a priori as set forth by means of the mythological representation of Ideals"forms of hope," 1 "objects of faith"-may be helpful at this introductory stage. Let us then consider broadly, first, Plato's handling of the "Idea of God," and then his handling of the "Idea of Soul." Consideration of his handling of the "Idea of Cosmos" may well be deferred till we come to the

Timaeus.

6. PLATO'S TREATMENT OF THE IDEA OF God

To the religious consciousness, whether showing itself in the faith which "non-religious people" sometimes find privately and cling to in time of trouble, or expressed to the world in the creeds and mythologies of the various religions, the Idea of God is the idea of a Personal God, or, it may be, of personal Gods. The God of the religious consciousness, whatever else he may be, is first of all a separate individual-one among other individuals, human and, it may be, superhuman, to whom he stands in relations by which he is determined or limited. He is Maker, King, Judge, Father, Friend. It may be true that attributes logically inconsistent with his being a finite individual person are ascribed to him in some of the creeds; but the inconsistency, when perceived, is always so dealt with that the all-important idea of his personality is left with undiminished power. The idea of the separate individuality or personality of the Self is not more essential to the moral consciousness than the idea of the separate individuality or personality of God is to the religious consciousness; and in the religious consciousness, at any rate, both of 1 It never yet did hurt,

To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope.

these ideas are involved—an individual Self stands in a personal relation to another individual, God.1

But logical thinking-whether in natural science or in metaphysics-when it busies itself, as it is too fond of doing, with the "Idea of God," arrives at a conclusion-this cannot be too plainly stated-flatly opposed to the conviction of the religious consciousness. Aristotle's ἐνέργεια ἄνευ δυνάμεως is not a Person; nor is Spinoza's Substantia Infinita; nor is the Absolute of later systems, although its true logical character has sometimes been disguised; nor is the "Nature" of modern science. Logical or scientific thinking presupposes and makes explicit the idea of an orderly Universe, of an organic whole determining necessarily the behaviour of its parts, of a single system realising itself fully, at every moment and at every place, in events which, for the most part, recur, and recurring retain a uniform character, or only change their character gradually. We should not be here, science assures us-living beings, acting and thinking—if the changes in our environment were catastrophic, not orderly and gradual. But although the Universe must be orderly if we are to live, it does not follow that it is orderly that we may live. Logical or scientific thinking, as such, scouts teleology in that form in which it is cherished by the religious consciousness, belief in a Particular Providence,―logical or scientific thinking, as such, that is, when it is not deflected from its path, as it sometimes is, by the attraction of religious conviction, just as the religious consciousness, on the other hand, is sometimes disturbed by science. Teleology, when taken up seriously, not merely played with, is a method which assumes the intentions of a Personal Ruler of the Universe, and explains the means which he employs in order to carry out his intentions. Logical or scientific thinking, as such, finds it

1 Cf. Hegelianism and Personality, A. S. Pringle-Pattison, pp. 217-218. 2 In saying that "science" scouts the teleology which recommends itself to the "religious consciousness" I do not think that I contradict the view, so ably enforced by Prof. W. James, that "teleology is the essence of intelligence"-that the translation, in which "science" consists, of the perceptual into the conceptual order "always takes place for the sake of some subjective interest, and the conception with which we handle a bit of sensible experience is really nothing but a teleological instrument. This whole function of conceiving, of fixing, and holding-fast to meanings, has no significance apart from the fact that the conceiver is a creature with partial purposes and private ends."-Princ. of Psych. i. 482.

inconceivable that the Part-and a Personal God, an individual .distinguished from other individuals, is a Part-should thus rule the Whole. If science and the religious consciousness try, as they sometimes do, to come to an understanding with each other on the basis of such a phrase as "Infinite Person " or "Universal Consciousness," the result is only to bring out more clearly, in the self-contradictory phrase, the incompatibility of their two points of view, and to make the breach, which it is attempted thus to heal, still wider. It is wise to recognise, once for all, that the scientific understanding, working within its own region, finds no place for a Personal God, and that the religious consciousness demands a Personal God -a Part which rules the Whole. The scientific conception

of Whole ruling Parts is, indeed, so distasteful to the religious consciousness that it always leans to Polytheism rather than to Monotheism.

That the incompatibility of the scientific conception with the conviction of the religious consciousness was present to Plato's mind is proved, as it seems to me, by the circumstance that it is in Myth that he presents the idea of a Personal God and the correlate idea of a Personal Immortality of the Soul.

Lest it should be objected that it is "unhistorical" to ascribe to Plato any perception of the issue on which religion and "modern science" are at variance, it may be well to point out that Plato's pupil, Aristotle, was aware of the issue, and faced it with characteristic directness. Any one who reads the Metaphysics, De Anima, and Ethics in connection will be struck by the way in which the logician gives up, apparently without scruple, the idea of a Personal God, and the correlate idea of the Personal Immortality of the Soul.

It may help us to make out what Plato hopes for from presenting these correlate ideas, in Myth, to the adult readers of his Dialogues, if we recall what he lays down in the second book of the Republic about the religious instruction of young children, on which all mental and moral education, according to him, is to be founded.

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The education of children, he tells us, is not to begin with instruction in "facts or "truths." It is not to begin, as we might say, with the "elementary truths of science" and "facts

Young children We must begin,

of common life," as learned in the primer. cannot yet understand what is true in fact. then, with what is false in fact-with fictions, with stories. Their only faculty is that of being interested in stories. Hence it is all important to have good stories to tell themto invent Myths with a good tendency. They are to be told what is literally false, in order that they may get hold of what is spiritually true-the great fundamental truth that God is "beneficent" and "truthful"—both adjectives applicable to a person; and a finite person, for they are to believe that he is the author only of what is good.

That God is such a finite person, then, is true, Plato would tell us; not, indeed, true in the sense in which the description of phenomena or data of experience may be true, but true, as being the only or best possible expression, at least for children, of the maxim or principle of guidance without which human life must come to naught. If children believe that God is the author, not of good only, but of evil also, they will grow up to be discontented and without hope-without faith in the good providence which helps those who help themselves-ready always to blame God or bad luck, rather than themselves, for their troubles and failures. If they do not believe that he is truthful, they will grow up to be careless observers and abstract reasoners, neglecting, as insignificant and "due to accident," those so-called little things which the careful interpreter of nature recognises as important signs and symptoms. They will grow up without the principles on which Conduct and Science respectively depend. On the one hand, they will be without that "hope which guides the wayward thoughts of men "—the faith (which indeed all struggle for existence implies) that honest effort will, on the whole, succeed in attaining good; they will believe instead-so far as it is possible for a living being to believe this-that "life is not worth living"; and so far as they are not, and cannot be, consistent pessimists, they will be selfish, individualistic citizens. On the other hand, if they have not been taught in their childhood to believe that "God is truthful," they will grow up without the first postulate of science-faith in the order and interpretability of the world. In one sentence," The Lie in the Soul "--the spirit of pessimism in conduct and

scepticism in science-will bring to naught all those who have not believed, in their childhood, that God is a Person, good and true. In their childhood: May they, will they, give up afterwards the belief in his Personality when it has done its work?

Most of them, continuing to live in "sense and imagination,”—albeit, under good guidance, useful lives,—will have no difficulty in retaining the belief of their childhood; but a few will become so "logical" that they will hardly be able to retain it.

It is in relation to the needs of these latter that we ought to consider the Myths setting forth the idea of a Personal God and the correlate idea of Personal Immortality of the Soul, which Plato has put into his Dialogues. In these Myths, they have representations of what they once believed as fact without questioning. They see the world of childhood -that dream-world which was once so real-put on the stage for them by a great Maker of Mysteries and Miracles.

But why represent it? That the continuity of their lives may be brought home to them-that they may be led to sympathise with what they were, and, sympathising, to realise that what they now are-is due to what they were. It is because the continuity of life is lost sight of, that religious conviction and scientific thought are brought into opposition. The scientific thinker, looking back over his life, is apt to divide it sharply into the time during which he believed what is not true, and the time during which he has known the truth.

Thus to fail in sympathy with his own childhood, and with the happy condition of the majority of men and women, and with the feelings which may yet return to comfort him when the hour of his death draws near, betokens, Plato would say, a serious flaw in a man's " philosophy of life." The man abstracts "the present time" from its setting in his whole life. He plucks from its stem the "knowledge of truth," and thinks that it still lives. The "knowledge of truth," Plato would tell us, does not come except to the man whose character has been formed and understanding guided, in childhood and youth, by unquestioning faith in the goodness and truthfulness of a Personal God. And this faith he must reverence all his life