plural, and seems to slip with remarkable ease from the
monotheistic to the polytheistic manner of speaking. In
addition to the many gods, we have frequent reference to
the one supreme Creator, controller, and ruler of the world,
who is further conceived as a Being providentially watch-
ing over the lives of men. But in what relation does this
supreme God stand to the Ideas, and especially to the Idea
of the Good? If God is separate from the highest Idea,
then, as Zeller points out, [Footnote 13] only three relations
are possible, all of which are {203} equally objectionable.
Firstly, God may be the cause or ground of the Idea of the
Good. But this destroys the substantiality of the Idea, and
indeed, destroys Plato’s whole system. The very essence of
his philosophy is that the Idea is the ultimate reality, which
is self-existent, and owes its being to nothing else. But this
theory makes it a mere creature of God, dependent on Him
for its existence. Secondly, God may owe His being to the
Idea. The Idea may be the ground of God’s existence as
it is the ground of all else in the universe. But this the-
ory does violence to the idea of God, turning Him into a
mere derivative existence, and, in fact, into an appearance.
Thirdly, God and the Idea may be co-ordinate in the sys-
tem as equally primordial independent ultimate realities.
But this means that Plato has given two mutually incon-
sistent accounts of the ultimate reality, or, if not, that his
system is a hopeless dualism. As none of these theories can
be maintained, it must be supposed that God is identical
with the Idea of the Good, and we find certain expressions
in the “Philebus” which seem clearly to assert this. But in
that case God is not a personal God at all, since the Idea is
not a person. The word God, if used in this way, is merely
a figurative term for the Idea. And this is the most prob-
able theory, if we reflect that there is in fact no room for
a personal God in a system which places all reality in the
Idea, and that to introduce such a conception threatens to
break up the whole system. Plato probably found it useful
to take the popular conceptions about the personality of
God or the gods and use them, in mythical fashion, to ex-
press his Ideas. Those parts of Plato which speak of God,
and the governance of God, {204} are to be interpreted on
the same principles as the other Platonic myths.[Footnote 13:Plato and the Older Academy, chap. vi.]Before closing our discussion of dialectic, it may be well to
consider what place it occupies in the life of man, and what
importance is attached to it. Here Plato’s answer is em-
phatic. Dialectic is the crown of knowledge, and knowledge
is the crown of life. All other spiritual activities have value
only in so far as they lead up to the knowledge of the Idea.
All other subjects of intellectual study are merely prepara-
tory to the study of philosophy. The special sciences have
no value in themselves, but they have value inasmuch as
their definitions and classifications form a preparation for
the knowledge of Ideas. Mathematics is important because
it is a stepping-stone from the world of sense to the Ideas.
Its objects, namely, numbers and geometrical figures, re-
semble the Ideas in so far as they are immutable, and they
resemble sense-objects in so far as they are in space or time.
In the educational curriculum of Plato, philosophy comes
last. Not everyone may study it. And none may study it
till he has been through all the preparatory stages of edu-
cation, which form a rigorous discipline of the mind before