in which it may find repose." This passage is thoroughly Platonic in spirit and throws much light on the meaning of these absolute ideas of Plato. With change of terms the same passage would apply to Truth and Goodness. We trace them as they appear in the conscious reason and disposition, as they are manifested in the relations of society or are suggested by the reality and beneficence of the world, and we are led to the conception of the perfect ideals whose truth exists in God.
Plato has four principles whose interrelation and process of the active elements determine the world, as the laws of modern evolution are conceived to work out the results discovered by science: (1) unlimited, unformed, or chaotic nature; (2) law, imposing limits and forms upon nature; (3) the resulting, definite types and ideas of a rational world; (4) the Cause which effects these results.
The Good is that which imparts truth to the object and knowledge to the perceiving subject, and is the cause of science and truth; hence, to know the Good is the ethical aim, for to know the Good is to act in harmony with it, and knowledge is virtue.
Plato was fully aware that the philosopher, then as to-day, was regarded by the many as a useless star-gazer, and in the celebrated Allegory of the Cave he shows the relation of true insight to the common view of life and the world. He imagines dwellers in a cave so placed that they see only the shadows of passing objects and hear only the echoes of sounds from the outer world. If released and brought to the full light of the sun they are dazzled and pained, and think they are in a world of false appearance, and believe the realities are the familiar shadows in
