essential nature into the stage of being below Him, but next to Him—are then, by the causative act of creation, deposited in things, differencing them one from the other, so that the things participate of them (μετέχουσι), communicate with them (κοινωνοῦσι); this likewise seems to present no incredible account of the relation of the world to its Author. That the intelligence of man, excited to reflection by the impressions of these objects, thus (though themselves transitory) participant of a divine quality, should rise to higher conceptions of the perfections thus faintly exhibited; and inasmuch as these perfections are unquestionably real existences, and known to be such in the very act of contemplation—that this should be regarded as a direct intellectual apperception of them, a union of the reason with the ideas in that sphere of being which is common to both—this is certainly no preposterous notion in substance, and by those who deeply study it, will perhaps be deemed no unwarrantable form of phrase. Finally, that the reason, in proportion as it learns to contemplate the perfect and eternal, desires the enjoyment of such contemplations in a more consummate degree, and cannot be fully satisfied except in the perfect fruition of the perfect itself, this seems not to contradict any received principle of psychology, or any known law of human nature. Yet these suppositions, taken together, constitute the famous 'Theory of Ideas;' and thus stated, may surely be pronounced to form no very appropriate object for
