is introduced by Plato in the following way: “God is the Good,” this
stands also at the head of the Platonic Ideas in the verbally delivered
discourses (_supra_, p. 11); “goodness, however, has no jealousy of
anything, and being free from jealousy, God desired to make all things
like Himself.”[46] God here is still without determination, and a
name which has no meaning for thought; nevertheless, where Plato in
the Timæus again begins from the beginning, he is found to have a
more definite idea of God. That God is devoid of envy undoubtedly is
a great, beautiful, true, and childlike thought. With the ancients,
on the contrary, we find in Nemesis, Dike, Fate, Jealousy, the one
determination of the gods: moved by this they cast down the great and
bring it low, and suffer not what is excellent and elevated to exist.
The later high-minded philosophers controverted this doctrine. For in
the mere idea of the Nemesis no moral determination is as yet implied,
because punishment there is only the humiliation of what oversteps
limits, but these limits are not yet presented as moral, and punishment
is thus not yet a recognition of the moral as distinguished from the
immoral. Plato’s thought is thus much higher than that of most of our
moderns, who, in saying that God is a hidden God who has not revealed
Himself to us and of whom we can know nothing, ascribe jealousy to
God. For why should He not reveal Himself to us if we earnestly seek
the knowledge of Him? A light loses nothing by another’s being kindled
therefrom, and hence there was in Athens a punishment imposed on those
who did not permit this to be done. If the knowledge of God were kept
from us in order that we should know only the finite and not attain
to the infinite, God would be a jealous God, or God would then become
an empty name. Such talk means no more than that we wish to neglect
what is higher and divine, and seek after our own petty interests and
opinions. This humility is sin—the sin against the Holy Ghost.
Plato continues: “God found the visible” (παραλαβών)—a mythical
expression proceeding from the necessity of beginning with an
immediate, which, however, as it presents itself, cannot in any way
be allowed—“not at rest, but moving in an irregular and disorderly
manner; and out of disorder he brought order, considering that this
was far better than the other.” From this it appears as if Plato had
considered that God was only the δημιοῦργος, _i.e._ the disposer of
matter, and that this, being eternal and independent, was found by
Him as chaos; but in view of what has been said, this is false. These
are not the philosophic doctrines which Plato seriously held, for he
speaks here only after the manner of the ordinary conception, and
such expressions have hence no philosophic content. It is only the
introduction of the subject, bringing us, as it does, to determinations
such as matter. Plato then comes in course of his progress to further
determinations, and in these we first have the Notion; we must hold to
what is speculative in Plato, and not to the first-mentioned ordinary
conception. Likewise, when he says that God esteemed order to be the
best, the mode of expression is naïve. Nowadays we should ask that
God should first be proved; and just as little should we allow the
visible to be established without much further ado. What is proved
by Plato from this more naïve method of expression is, in the first
place, the true determination of the Idea, which only appears later
on. It is further said: “God reflecting that of what is visible, the
unintelligent (ἀνόητον) could not be fairer than the intelligent
(νοῦς), and that intelligence could not exist in anything devoid of
soul, for these reasons put intelligence in the soul, and the soul
in the body, and so united them that the world became a living and
intelligent system, an animal.” We have reality and intelligence,
and the soul as the bond connecting the two extremes, without which
intelligence could not have part in the visible body; we saw the true
reality comprehended by Plato in a similar way in the Phædrus (_supra_,
p. 39). “There is, however, only one such animal, for were there two or
more, these would be only parts of the one, and only one.”[47]
Plato now first proceeds to the determination of the Idea of corporeal
existence: “Because the world was to become corporeal, visible and
tangible, and since without fire nothing can be seen, and without
solidity, without earth, nothing can be touched, God in the beginning
made fire and earth.” In this childlike way Plato introduces these
extremes, solidity and life. “But two things cannot be united without
a third, there must be a bond between them, uniting both”—one of
Plato’s simple methods of expression. “The fairest bond, however, is
that which most completely fuses itself and that which is bound by
it.” That is a profound saying, in which the Notion is contained; the
bond is the subjective and individual, the power which dominates the
other, which makes itself identical with it. “Proportion” (ἀναλογία)
is best adapted to effect such a fusion; that is, whenever of three
numbers or magnitudes or powers, that which is the mean is to the
last term what the first term is to the mean, and again when the mean
is to the first term as the last term is to the mean (a : b = b : c)
“then the mean having become the first and last, and the first and
last both having become means, all things will necessarily come to be
the same; but having come to be the same, everything will be one.”[48]
This is excellent, we have still preserved this in our Philosophy;
it is the distinction which is no distinction. This diremption from
which Plato proceeds, is the conclusion which we know from logic; it
appears in the form of the ordinary syllogism, in which, however, the
whole rationality of the Idea is, at least externally, contained. The
distinctions are the extremes, and the mean is the identity which in a
supreme degree makes them one; the conclusion is thus speculative, and
in the extremes unites itself with itself, because all the terms pass
through all the different positions. It is hence a mistake to disparage
the conclusion and not to recognize it as the highest and absolute
form; in respect of the conclusions arrived at by the understanding,
on the contrary, we should be right in rejecting it. This last has no
such mean; each of the differences is there recognized as different in
its own independent form, as having a character different from that
of the other. This, in the Platonic philosophy, is abrogated, and
the speculative element in it constitutes the proper and true form
of conclusion, in which the extremes neither remain in independence
as regards themselves, nor as regards the mean. In the conclusion of
the understanding, on the contrary, the unity which is constituted is
only the unity of essentially different contents which remain such;
for here a subject, a determination, is, through the mean, simply
bound up with another, or “some conception is joined to some other
conception.” In a rational conclusion, however, the main point of its
speculative content is the identity of the extremes which are joined
to one another; in this it is involved that the subject presented in
the mean is a content which does not join itself with another, but only
through the other and in the other with itself. In other words, this
constitutes the essential nature of God, who, when made subject, is
the fact that He begot His Son, the world; but in this reality which
appears as another, He still remains identical with Himself, does away
with the separation implied in the Fall, and, in the other, merely
unites Himself to Himself and thus becomes Spirit. When the immediate
is elevated over the mediate and it is then said that God’s actions are
immediate, there is, indeed, good ground for the assertion; but the
concrete fact is that God is a conclusion which, by differentiating
itself, unites itself to itself, and, through the abrogation of the
mediation, reinstates its own immediacy. In the Platonic philosophy we
thus have what is best and highest; the thoughts are, indeed, merely
pure thoughts, but they contain everything in themselves; for all
concrete forms depend on thought-determinations alone. The Fathers thus
found in Plato the Trinity which they wished to comprehend and prove
in thought: with Plato the truth really has the same determination
as the Trinity. But these forms have been neglected for two thousand
years since Plato’s time, for they have not passed into the Christian
religion as thoughts; indeed they were considered to be ideas which had
entered in through error, until quite recent times, when men began to
understand that the Notion is contained in these determinations, and
that nature and spirit can thus be comprehended through their means.
Plato continues: “Since what is solid requires two means, because it
not only has breadth but also depth, God has placed air and water
between fire and earth; and indeed He gave to them the same proportion,
so that fire is related to air as air to water, and as air is to
water, so is water to earth.”[49] Thus we have, properly speaking,
four methods of representing space, inasmuch as the point is, through
line and surface, closely bound up with the solid body. The sundered
mean here discovered, again indicates an important thought of logical
profundity; and the number four which here appears, is in nature
a fundamental number. For as being the different which is turned
towards the two extremes, the mean must be separated in itself. In
the conclusion in which God is the One, the second (the mediating),
the Son; the third, the Spirit; the mean indeed is simple. But the
cause why that which in the rational conclusion is merely three-fold,
passes in nature to the four-fold, rests in what is natural, because
what in thought is immediately the one, becomes separate in Nature.
But in order that in Nature the opposition should exist as opposition,
it must itself be a twofold, and thus, when we count, we have four.
This also takes place in the conception of God, for when we apply
it to the world, we have nature as mean and the existent spirit as
the way of return for nature: when the return is made, this is the
absolute Spirit. This living process, this separation and unifying of
differences, is the living God.
Plato says further: “Through this unity the visible and tangible world
has been made. And it comes to pass by God’s having given to it these
elements entire and unseparated, that it is perfect, and unaffected by
age and disease. For old age and disease only arise from a body’s being
worked upon by a superabundance of such elements from without. But
here this is not so, for the world contains those elements entirely in
itself, and nothing can come to it from without. The world is spherical
in form,” (as it was to Parmenides and the Pythagoreans) “as being
most perfect, and as containing all others in itself; it is perfectly
smooth, since for it there is nothing outside, and it requires no
limbs.” Finitude consists in this, that a distinction as regards
something else is an externality to some other object. In the Idea we
certainly have determination, limitation, difference, other-being, but
it is at the same time dissolved, contained, gathered together, in the
one. Thus it is a difference through which no finitude arises, seeing
that it likewise is sublated. Finitude is thus in the infinite itself,
and this is, indeed, a great thought. “God gave the world the most
appropriate motion of all the seven, being that which harmonizes best
with mind and consciousness, motion in a circle; the other six He took
away from it and liberated it from their variations”[50] (movements
backwards and forwards). This is only a popular way of putting it.
We read further: “Since God wished to make the world a God, He gave it
soul, and this was placed in the centre and diffused through the whole,
which was also surrounded by it externally; and in this way He brought
to pass the self-sufficing existence which required no other, and which
needed no other friendship or acquaintance than itself. Through these
means God created the world as a blessed God.” We may say that here,
where the world is a totality through the world-soul, we first have the
knowledge of the Idea; for the first time this newly-begotten God,
as the mean and identity, is the true absolute. That first God which
was only goodness, is, on the contrary, a mere hypothesis, and hence
neither determined nor self-determining. “Now though we have spoken of
the soul last,” Plato goes on, “it does not for that reason come last;
for this is merely our manner of speech. The soul is the ruler, the
king, and the body is its subject.” It is only Plato’s naïvety which
ascribes the reversal of the order of the two to a manner of speech.
What here appears as contingent is really necessary—that is, to begin
with the immediate and then come to the concrete. We must likewise
adopt this method, but with the consciousness that when we begin with
determinations such as Being, or God, Space, Time, &c., we speak of
them in an immediate manner, and this content, in accordance with its
nature, is at first immediate, and consequently undetermined in itself.
God, for example, with whom we begin as an immediate, is proved only at
the last, and then, indeed, as the true first. Thus we can, as already
remarked, (p. 72) show Plato’s confusion of mind in such presentations;
but it depends entirely on what Plato’s standard of truth is.
Plato further shows us the nature of the Idea in one of the most
famous and profound of passages, where in the essence of the soul he
recognizes again the very same idea that he also expressed as the
essence of the corporeal. For he says: “The soul is created in the
following way: Of the indivisible and unchangeable and also of the
divisible which is corporeal, God made a third kind of intermediate
essence, which partook of the nature of the same and of the nature of
the other or diverse.” (The divisible is to Plato likewise the other
as such, or in itself, and not of anything else.) “And God in like
manner made the soul a sort of intermediate between the indivisible
and the divisible.” Here the abstract determinations of the one which
is identity, of the many or non-identical, which is opposition and
difference, once more appear. If we say: “God, the Absolute, is the
identity of the identical and non-identical,” a cry is raised of
barbarism and scholasticism. Those who speak of it so still hold Plato
in high esteem, and yet it was thus that he determined the truth. “And
taking these three elements as separate, God mingled them all into one
Idea, because he forcibly compressed the incongruous nature of the
other into the same.”[51] This is undoubtedly the power of the Notion,
which posits the many, the separate, as the ideal, and that is also the
force applied to the understanding when anything is placed before it.
Plato now describes how the self-identical, as itself a moment, and
the other or matter, and the third, the apparently dissoluble union
which has not returned into the first unity—which three were originally
separated—have now, in simple reflection into self and resumption of
that beginning, been degraded into moments. “Mingling the identical
and the other with the essence (οὐσία),” the third moment, “and making
them all one, God again divided this whole into as many parts was
as fitting.”[52] Since this substance of the soul is identical with
that of the visible world, the one whole is for the first time the
now systematized substance, the true matter, the absolute element
which is internally divided, an enduring and unseparable unity of the
one and many; and no other essence must be demanded. The manner and
mode of the division of this subjectivity contain the famous Platonic
numbers, which doubtless originally pertain to the Pythagoreans, and
respecting which both ancients and moderns, and even Kepler himself
in his _Harmonia mundi_, have taken much pains, but which no one has
properly understood. To understand would mean two things, and in
the first place, the recognition of their speculative significance,
their Notion. But, as already remarked of the Pythagoreans (Vol.
I. p. 224), these distinctions of number give only an indefinite
conception of difference, and that only in the earlier numbers; where
the relationships become more complicated, they are quite incapable of
designating them more closely. In the second place, because of their
being numbers, they express, as differences of magnitude, differences
in what is sensuous only. The system of apparent magnitude—and it is
in the heavenly system that magnitude appears most purely and freely,
liberated from what is qualitative—must correspond to them. But
these living number-spheres are themselves systems composed of many
elements—both of the magnitude of distance and of velocity and mass. No
one of these elements, taken as a succession of simple numbers, can be
likened to the system of heavenly spheres, for the series corresponding
to this system can, as to its members, contain nothing else than the
system of all these moments. Now if the Platonic numbers were also
the elements of each system such as this, it would not be only this
element which would have to be taken into account, for the relationship
of moments which become distinguished in movement has to be conceived
of as a whole, and is the true object of interest and reason. What we
have to do is to give briefly the main points as matter of history;
we have the most thorough treatment of it given us by Böckh “On the
Constitution of the World-Soul in the Timæus of Plato,” in the third
volume of the Studies of Daub and Creuzer (p. 26 _et seq._).
The fundamental series is very simple: “God first took one part out
of the whole; then the second, the double of the first; the third is
one and a half times as many as the second, or three times the first;
the next is double the second; the fifth is three times the third;
the sixth is eight times the first; the seventh is twenty-seven times
greater than the first.” Hence the series is: 1; 2; 3; 4 = 2²; 9 = 3²;
8 = 2³; 27 = 3³. “Then God filled up the double and triple intervals”
(the relations 1 : 2 and 1 : 3) “by again abstracting portions from
the whole. These parts he placed in the intervals in such a way that
in each interval there were two means, the one exceeding and exceeded
by the extremes in the same ratio, the other being that kind of mean
which by an equal number exceeds and is exceeded by the extremes.” That
is, the first is a constant geometric relationship, and the other is
an arithmetical. The first mean, brought about through the quadration,
is thus in the relation 1 : 2, for example, the proportion 1 : √̅2
: 2; the other is in the same relation, the number 1½. Hereby new
relations arise which are again in a specially given and more difficult
method inserted into that first, but this is done in such a way that
everywhere something has been left out, and the last relation of number
to number is 256 : 243, or 2^8 : 3^5.
Much progress is not, however, made with these number-relations, for
they do not present much to the speculative Notion. The relationships
and laws of nature cannot be expressed by these barren numbers; they
form an empirical relation which does not constitute the basis of
the proportions of nature. Plato now says: “God divided this entire
series lengthways into two parts which he set together crosswise like
an X, and he bent their ends into a circular form and comprehended
them in a uniform motion—forming an inner circle and an outer—and he
called the motion of the outer circle the motion of the same, and
that of the inner the motion of the diverse, giving supremacy to the
former, and leaving it intact. But the inner motion he again split
into seven orbits after the same relations; three of these he made to
move with equal velocity, and four with unequal velocity to the three
and to one another. This is the system of the soul within which all
that is corporeal is formed; the soul is the centre, it penetrates
the whole and envelopes it from without and moves in itself. Thus
it has the divine beginning of a never-ceasing and rational life in
itself.”[53] This is not quite devoid of confusion, and from it we
can only grasp the general fact that as to Plato with the idea of the
corporeal universe that of the soul enters in as the all-embracing
and simple, to him the essence of the corporeal and of the soul is
unity in difference. This double essence, posited in and for itself
in difference, becomes systematized within the one in many moments,
which are, however, movements; thus this reality and that essence both
pertain to this whole in the antithesis of soul and body, and this
again is one. Mind is what penetrates all, and to it the corporeal is
opposed as truly as that it itself is mind.
This is a general description of the soul which is posited in the
world and reigns over it; and in as far as the substantial, which is
in matter, is similar to it, their inherent identity is asserted. The
fact that in it the same moments which constitute its reality are
contained, merely signifies that God, as absolute Substance, does not
see anything other than Himself. Plato hence describes the relation
of soul to objective reality thus: it, if it touches any of the
moments, whether dispersed in parts or indivisible, is stirred in all
its powers to declare the sameness and the difference of that or some
other thing, and how, where, and when, the individual is related to
the other and to the universal. “Now when the orbit of the sensuous,
moving in its due course, imparts knowledge of itself to its whole
soul” (where the different orbits of the world’s course show themselves
to correspond with the inwardness of mind) “true opinions and beliefs
arise. But when the soul applies itself to the rational and the orbit
of the self-identical makes itself known, thought is perfected into
knowledge.”[54] This is the essential reality of the world as of the
inherently blessed God; here the Idea of the whole is for the first
time perfected, and, in accordance with this Idea, the world first
makes its appearance. What had hitherto appeared was the reality of the
sensuous only and not the world as sensuous, for though Plato certainly
spoke before of fire, &c. (p. 75), he there gave only the reality of
the sensuous; he would hence have done better to have omitted these
expressions. In them we have the reason for its appearing as if Plato
had here begun to consider from the beginning that of which he has
already treated (_supra_, p. 72). For since we must begin from the
abstract in order to reach the true and the concrete, which first
appears later on (_supra_, p. 79), this last, when it has been found,
has the appearance and form of a new commencement, particularly in
Plato’s loose style.
Plato now goes on further, for he calls this divine world the pattern
which is in thought (νοητόν) alone, and always in self-identity; but
he again places this whole in opposition to itself, so that there is
a second, the copy of the first, the world, which has origination
and is visible. This second is the system of the heavenly movement,
the first is the eternally living. The second, which has origination
and becoming within it, cannot be made perfectly like the first, the
eternal Idea. But it is made a self-moving image of the eternal that
remains in the unity; and this eternal image that moves rhythmically,
after the manner of numbers, is what we call time. Plato says of it
that we are in the habit of calling the ‘was’ and ‘will be’ parts of
time, and we transfer these indications of change which operate in
time, into absolute essence. But the true time is eternal, or the
present. For the substance can neither become older nor younger, and
time, as the immediate image of the eternal, has neither the future nor
the present in its parts. Time is ideal, like space, not sensuous, but
the immediate mode in which mind comes forth in objective form, the
sensuous non-sensuous. The real moments of the principle of absolute
movement in what is temporal, are those in which changes appear. “From
the mind and will of God in the creation of time, there arose the sun,
moon, and five other stars which are called the planets, and which
serve to distinguish and preserve the relations of time.”[55] For in
them the numbers of time are realized. Thus the heavenly movement, as
the true time, is the image of the eternal which yet remains in unity,
_i.e._ it is that in which the eternal retains the determination of the
‘same.’ For everything is in time, that is, in negative unity which
does not allow anything to root itself freely in itself, and thus to
move and to be moved according to chance.