with other particular objects, in sensible experience. This the Scientific Understanding fails to grasp. When it tries to deal with them—and it is ready enough to make the venture -it must needs envisage them, more suo, as though they were particular objects which could be brought under its Categories in sensible experience. Then the question arises, "Where are they?" And the answer comes sooner or later, "They are nowhere to be found." Thus "science" chills the "sweet hope " in which man lives, by bringing the natural expression of it into discredit.

This, I take it, is Plato's reason for employing Myth, rather than the language and method of "science," when he wishes to set forth the a priori as it expresses itself in Ideals. In the mise en scène of the Timaeus or Myth of Er, Soul, Cosmos, and God are presented concretely indeed, but in such visionary form that there is little danger of mistaking them for particulars of sense requiring "scientific explanation." Again, as for the a priori Habitudes or Faculties of man's moral and intellectual structure, whereby he corresponds with his environment in detail these, too, Plato holds, are to be set forth in Myth; for they are properly set forth when they are deduced "traced to their origin, which is that of the Cosmos a matter beyond the reach of the Scientific Understanding. It is in a Myth of Reminiscence, therefore, such as that in the Phaedrus, that we must take account of the question of "the origin of knowledge"; in a Myth such as that of the Golden Age in the Laws, of the question of "the origin of society."1

These and other ultimate "questions of origin," carrying us back as they do to the nature of God and the constitution of the Cosmos, are not for "science." Plato found Myth invested in the minds of his contemporaries with the authority of old tradition and the new charm which Pindar and the tragedians had bestowed upon it; perhaps, too, if my suggestion 2 has any value, he found it associated, in his own mind and the minds of other Socratici viri, with the personal influence of the Master where that influence was most im

1 The spirit, and much in the detail, of the Cratylus justify the view that Plato approached the question of the “origin of language” too dià μvboXoylas. 2 Supra, p. 3.

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 Fóava 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.

Henry IV. (Part ii.), i. 3.

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.

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

of common life," as learned in the primer. Young children cannot yet understand what is true in fact. We must begin, 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 them— to 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. 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

On