know it himself; and although the knowledge of it is bound up with the existence of his State, and is the culmination of his system, all that he does is to "conduct us to the chamber where this precious and indispensable secret is locked up, but he has no key to open the door."[1]
Sometimes, indeed, he personifies this supreme Idea, and, as in the "Timaeus" and "Philebus," abstract goodness is merged in the concrete God. But even here, his conception of Deity rises far above the jealous and sensitive occupants of Homer's Olympus, who were immortal beings with mortal passions and sympathies, strongly attached to persons and places, and sharing in all the hopes and fears of their worshippers. A Christian writer could hardly frame a more exalted idea of divinity than that which Plato has expressed in many of his Dialogues. With him the Deity is a being of perfect wisdom and goodness, all-wise and all-powerful, ruling the world which he has created by the supremacy of His reason. He can be only known to us through some type or form; but let none suppose that He would put on a human shape by night or by day, to help a friend or deceive a foe: for, being perfect goodness in Himself, such a change could be only for the worse; and, being perfect truth, He hates a lie either in word or in deed.[2]
In this conception of the Deity, Plato does but represent the tendency of Greek religion towards "Monotheism." Long before his time, all the deeper thinkers
