Dialogues

by the laws of the state. Thirdly, he notes a confusion in the minds of men arising out of their misinterpretation of the appearances of the world around them: they do not always see the righteous rewarded and the wicked punished. So in modern times there are some whose infidelity has arisen from doubts about the inspiration of ancient writings; others who have been made unbelievers by physical science, or again by the seemingly political character of religion; while there is a third class to whose minds the difficulty of “justifying the ways of God to man” has been the chief stumbling-block. Plato is very much out of temper at the impiety of some of his contemporaries (X 888); yet he is determined to reason with the victims, as he regards them, of these illusions before he punishes them. His answer to the unbelievers is twofold: first, that the soul is prior to the body (X 891 E); secondly, that the ruler of the universe being perfect has made all things with a view to their perfection (X 903 C, 904). The difficulties arising out of ancient sacred writings were far less serious in the age of Plato than in our own.

We too have our popular Epicureanism, which would allow the world to go on as if there were no God. When the belief in Him, whether of ancient or modern times, begins to fade away, men relegate Him, either in theory or practice, into a distant heaven. They do not like expressly to deny God when it is more convenient to forget Him; and so the theory of the Epicurean becomes the practice of mankind in general. Nor can we be said to be free from that which Plato justly considers to be the worst unbelief⁠—of those who put superstition in the place of true religion. For the larger half of Christians continue to assert that the justice of God may be turned aside by gifts, and, if not by the “odour of fat, and the sacrifice steaming to heaven,” still by another kind of sacrifice placed upon the altar⁠—by masses for the quick and dead, by dispensations, by building churches, by rites and ceremonies⁠—by the same means which the heathen used, taking other names and shapes. And the indifference of Epicureanism and unbelief is in two ways the parent of superstition, partly because it permits, and also because it creates, a necessity for its development in religious and enthusiastic temperaments. If men cannot have a rational belief, they will have an irrational. And hence the most superstitious countries are also at a certain point of civilization the most unbelieving, and the revolution which takes one direction is quickly followed by a reaction in the other. So we may read “between the lines” ancient history and philosophy into modern, and modern into ancient. Whether we compare the theory of Greek philosophy with the Christian religion, or the practice of the Gentile world with the practice of the Christian world, they will be found to differ more in words and less in reality than we might have supposed. The greater opposition which is sometimes made between them seems to arise chiefly out of a comparison of the ideal of the one with the practice of the other.

To the errors of superstition and unbelief Plato opposes the simple and natural truth of religion; the best and highest, whether conceived in the form of a person or a principle⁠—as the divine mind or as the idea of good⁠—is believed by him to be the basis of human life. That all things are working together for good to the good and evil to the evil in this or in some other world to which human actions are transferred, is the sum of his faith or theology. Unlike Socrates, he is absolutely free from superstition. Religion and morality are one and indivisible to him. He dislikes the “heathen mythology,” which, as he significantly remarks, was not tolerated in Crete, and perhaps (for the meaning of his words is not quite clear) at Sparta (X 886 B, C: compare III 680 C). He gives no encouragement to individual enthusiasm; “the establishment of religion could only be the work of a mighty intellect” (X 909 E). Like the Hebrews, he prohibits private rites; for the avoidance of superstition, he would transfer all worship of the Gods to the public temples (X 909 D). He would not have men and women consecrating the accidents of their lives (X 909 E). He trusts to human punishments and not to divine judgments; though he is not unwilling to repeat the old tradition that certain kinds of dishonesty “prevent a man from having a family” (XI 913 C). He considers that the “ages of faith” have passed away and cannot now be recalled (XII 948 B). Yet he is far from wishing to extirpate the sentiment of religion, which he sees to be common to all mankind⁠—Barbarians as well as Hellenes (X 886 A). He remarks that no one passes through life without, sooner or later, experiencing its power (X 888 B, C). To which we may add the further remark that the greater the irreligion, the more violent has often been the religious reaction.

It is remarkable that Plato’s account of mind at the end of the Laws goes beyond Anaxagoras, and beyond himself in any of his previous writings. Aristotle, in a well-known passage (Metaphysics I 4) which is an echo of the “Phaedo” (97, 98), remarks on the inconsistency of Anaxagoras in introducing the agency of mind, and yet having recourse to other and inferior, probably material causes. But Plato makes the further criticism, that the error of Anaxagoras consisted, not in denying the universal agency of mind, but in denying the priority, or, as we should