1 3 in the silent language of nature, seem to speak thus much to us that there is some object in the world, so much bigger and vaster than our mind and thoughts, that it is the very same to them that the ocean is to narrow vessels; so that when they have taken into themselves as much as they can by contemplation, and filled up all their capacity, there is still an immensity of it left without which cannot enter in for want of room to receive it, and therefore must be apprehended after some other strange and more mysterious manner, namely, by their being, as it were, plunged into it, and swallowed up or lost in it." Similarly, More appeals to the natural remorse of conscience, to good hope, and to reverence and worship, as proofs of the existence of God; presenting the faculty of "Divine Sagacity"-the birth of a "Holy Life"-as "antecedaneous to Reason "-åπwσov σeavтóv, simplify thyself, he says, and walk by the "easie Sagacity," " the simple light of the Divine Love"; while Norris lays it down that "the mind which sees the Divine Essence must be totally and thoroughly absolved from all commerce with the corporeal senses, either by Death, or some ecstatical and rapturous abstraction"; and Smith rests his belief in God and Immortality far more on the certitude of the Heart than of the Head. To these devout Platonists God and Immortality are simply wants—wants of the practical volitional part of us, for the sake of which, after all, the thinking part thinks. A God fashioned logically, in such a way as to satisfy the thinking part alone that is, fashioned by the thinking part making its own satisfaction its end-will be a God who does not satisfy the volitional part, and consequently cannot, in the long run, be maintained. We have much to learn from the Platonists who, by laying stress on the mere want of a God, suggest that the logical faculty ought not to be allowed to have the last word in theology.* That Platonism is a temper is brought home to us by nothing in the History of Philosophy more clearly than by the development of Berkeley's mind. His early thought 1 Antidote against Atheism, book i. ch. 10. p. 29. 2 Defence of the Moral Cabbala, ch. 1, p. 155. 3 Reason and Religion, p. 3. 4 I would refer, in this connection, to a remarkable Essay on "Reflex Action and Theism," by Professor W. James, in his volume, The Will to Believe. In the New Theory of moved on lines laid down by Locke. Vision (1709) and Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), works of his early manhood, he appears as the mid-link between Locke and Hume in the sensationalistic succession. His interest, at this period, is mainly scientific, although there is a theological reference even in this early work which distinguishes it from the work of either Locke or Hume. Experience, though interpreted according to the principles of the Lockian Critique, is yet "the Language of God”—Malebranche's doctrine of "seeing all things in God" doubtless influences him. In The New Theory and The Principles Berkeley may be said to adopt sensationalistic doctrine en Platonicien. But see how this Platonist temper, showing itself even in works written chiefly under the influence of Locke, hurries the man away from science into action, rouses him into sympathy — always, be it noted, practical and statesmanlike with the miseries of the Irish people, carries him across the Atlantic on his enthusiastic mission to found a college which should be the centre of evangelical work among the American aborigines. The scheme failed; he returned, disappointed, but not disillusioned, to devote the remainder of his life to the advocacy of philanthropic schemes-and to write that wonderful Siris, a Chain of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries concerning the Virtues of Tar-water, in which the practical Platonism of his nature, pent up, as age and a fatal disorder condemned him to greater retirement, found natural relief in dogmatic expression. It is in Siris that Berkeley appears as the latest adherent of the school of Cudworth and More But what, it may be well asked, is the connection between Tar-water (which Berkeley recommends as a panacea) and Platonism? The answer is, that tar, the exudation of the pine, is the purest vehicle of that "invisible fire or Spirit of the universe" by the agency of which all things live: the introduction of an additional amount of this vital cosmic principle into the human system by means of a decoction of tar has the effect of heightening the bodily powers and expelling all diseases. That there is such a vital principle of the Universe is shown to be the only hypothesis consistent with that Platonism which to adopt More's phrase with a slight alteration—is “ the soul of the Philosophy of which 'modern science' is the body." Let me close this work with two quotations from Siriseloquent utterances of the Platonist temper : It might very well be thought serious trifling to tell my readers, that the greatest men had ever a high esteem for Plato ; whose writings are the touchstone of a hasty and shallow mind; whose philosophy has been the admiration of ages; which supplied patriots, magistrates, and law-givers, to the most flourishing states, as well as fathers to the Church, and doctors to the schools. Albeit in these days, the depths of that old learning are rarely fathomed, and yet it were happy for these lands, if our young nobility and gentry, instead of modern maxims, would imbibe the notions of the great men of antiquity. . . . It may be modestly presumed there are not many among us, even of those who are called the better sort, who have more sense, virtue, and love of their country than Cicero, who, in a letter to Atticus, could not forbear exclaiming, O Socrates et Socratici viri! nunquam vobis gratiam referam. Would to God many of our countrymen had the same obligations to those Socratic writers! Certainly where the people are well educated, the art of piloting a state is best learnt from the writings of Plato. . . . Proclus, in the first book of his commentary on the Theology of Plato, observes that, as in the mysteries, those who are initiated, at first meet with manifold and multiform gods, but being entered and thoroughly initiated, they receive the divine illumination, and participate in the very Deity; in like manner, if the Soul looks abroad, she beholds the shadows and images of things; but returning into herself she unravels and beholds her own essence: at first she seemeth only to behold herself, but having penetrated further she discovers the mind. And again, still further advancing into the innermost Sanctuary of the Soul she contemplates the ev yévos. And this, he saith, is the most excellent of all human acts, in the silence and repose of the faculties of the Soul to tend upwards to the very Divinity; to approach and be clearly joined with that which is ineffable and superior to all beings. When come so high as the first principle she ends her journey and rests.1 Whatever the world thinks, he who hath not much meditated upon God, the Human Mind, and the Summum Bonum, may possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman.2 INDEX Adam, Mr., on Plato's attitude to doctrine | Allegory of Castle of Medina, Spenser's, of Immortality of the Soul, 71 on circle of the Same and the Other, on the position of the Throne of on the astronomy of the Politicus 257 in Purgatorio, xxix., 257 of the Cave, Plato's, 250 ff. of the Disorderly Crew, Plato's, 253 ff. 'Aváμvnois, doctrine of, 343 ff. compared with Dante's mythology of Adam Smith, Dr. G., on allegorical inter- | Angels, Jewish doctrine of, and Greek doctrine of Daemons, 450 Aeschylus, attitude of, to doctrine of Apocalypse of Paul, Dr. M. R. James on, Immortality of the Soul, 63, 64 Aesop's Fables, at once African Beast- tales and Parables, 16 Agyrtae, 70 364 Apocalypse, the astronomical, 361 ff. Aionp, in Epinomis, de Coelo, Meteorol., Apuleius, his interpretation of the Ulysses 438, 439 Albertus, on the Earthly Paradise, 105 Allegorical interpretation, Dr. G. Adam Dr. Bigg on, 236 of Myths, by Plotinus and Neo-Plato- St. Paul authorises, 237 of Myths, Plato's judgment on, 20, 242 Allegorical tales deliberately made, 16 by the Stoics, 233, 234 Plutarch on, 231, 232 by Stoics, Cicero on, 233 Mr. Adam on, 233 Myth, 241, 242 demonology of, 445 ff. Aquinas, St. Thomas, on the Earthly Archer-Hind, Mr., his Timaeus quoted, Aristippus, Henricus, translated Phaedo Aristotle, misapprehends the Timaeus, 269 poetised astronomy, 163, 164 his poetised astronomy, influence of, his supposed tomb near Chalcis, 153 gives up ideas of a Personal God and Allegorisation of Old Testament, Philo's, Aristotelian astronomy, 354 234 ff. by Christian Fathers, 236, 237 Astronomy, part played by, in Poetry, |