the philosophy of Plato, which was divided into three branches, theology, physics, and mathematics. Under theology were comprehended metaphysics and ethics, or that which in modern language is called moral philosophy. Plato wrote likewise on dialectics, but with such inferiority to his pupil Aristotle, that his works in that department of science are seldom mentioned.

The ancient philosophers always began their theological systems with some disquisition on the nature of the gods, and the formation of the world; and it was a fundamental doctrine with them, that from nothing nothing can proceed. We are not to suppose that this general axiom implied nothing more than that for every effect there must be a cause; for this is a proposition which no man will controvert who understands the terms in which it is expressed: but the ancients believed that a proper creation is impossible even to omnipotence, and that to the production of any thing a material is not left necessary than an efficient cause, (see Metaphysics, No. 264—304.) That with respect to this important question, Plato agreed with his predecessors and contemporaries, appears evident to us from the whole tenor of his

Timæus. We agree with Dr Enfield* in thinking, that in this dialogue, which comprehends his whole doctrine on the subject of the formation of the universe, matter is so manifestly spoken of as eternally co-existing with God, that this part of his doctrine could not have been mistaken by so many learned and able writers, had they not been seduced by the desire of establishing a coincidence of doctrine between the writings of Plato and Moses. It is certain that neither Cicero† nor Apuleius‡ nor Alcinous§ nor even the later commentator Lib. i. c. 6. Chalcidius, understood their matter in any other sense than as admitting two primary and incorruptible principles, God and matter; to which we shall afterwards see reason to add a third, namely ideas. The passages quoted by those who maintain the contrary opinion are by no means sufficient for their purpose. Plato, it is true, in his Timæus, calls God the parent of the universe, and in his Sophista speaks of him as "forming animate and inanimate beings, which did not before exist;" but these expressions do not necessarily imply that this offspring of Deity was produced from nothing, or that no prior matter existed from which these new beings were formed. Through the whole dialogue of the Timæus, Plato supposes two eternal and independent causes of all things; one, that by which all things are made, which is God; the other, that from which all things are made, which is matter. He distinguishes between God, matter, and the universe, and supposes the architect of the world to have formed it out of a mass of pre-existent matter. Matter, according to Plato, is an eternal and infinite principle. His doctrine on this head is thus explained by Cicero||. "Matter, from which all things are produced and formed, is a substance without form or quality, but capable of receiving all forms, and undergoing every kind of change; in which, however, it never suffers annihilation, but merely a solution of its parts, which are in their nature infinitely divisible, and move in portions of space which are also infinitely divisible. When that principle which we call quality is moved, and acts upon matter, it undergoes an entire change, and those forms are produced, from which arises the diversified and coherent system of the universe." This doctrine Plato unfolds at large in his Timæus, and particularly insists upon the notion, that matter has originally no form, but is capable of receiving any. He calls it the mother and receptacle of forms, by the union of which with matter the universe becomes perceptible to the senses; and maintains, that the visible world owes its forms to the energy of the divine intellectual nature.

Our author is supported in drawing this inference by the testimony of Diogenes Laertius, who surely understood the language and dogmas of Plato better than the most accomplished modern scholar can pretend to do; yet a learned writer* has lately expressed great surprise that any one should consider matter as having been, in Plato's opinion, uncreated; and he boldly affirms, that Laertius, instead of affecting that spirit and matter were the principles of all things, ought to have said that God alone, in Plato's estimation, was their original.—To prove this, he gives from the Timæus a quotation, in which the founder of the academy declares that God framed heaven and earth, and the inferior deities; and that as he fashioned, so he pervades all nature. He observes, that Cicero denominates the god of Plato the maker, and the god of Aristotle only the governor, of the world. And, to satisfy those who may demand a particular proof of Plato's having taught a real creation, he affirms that his writings abound with declarations on the subject, of which the meaning cannot be misapprehended. "With this purpose (says he) Plato denominates at one time the principles or substance of all things, ἐξωτερικὰς τῶν ἀναγεννήσεων, the productions of the efficient Deity, and at others enters more particularly into the question. Thus, he observes, that many persons are ignorant of the nature and power of mind or intellect, 'as having existed at the beginning, antecedent to all bodies.' Of this mind, he observes, that it is without exception ἀπορρίπτεται, of all things the most ancient; and he subjoins, in order to remove all doubt of his purpose, that it is also ἀγέννητος, the cause or principle of motion."

With all possible respect for Dr Ogilvie, of whose piety and erudition we are thoroughly convinced, we must take the liberty to say, that to us the declarations of Plato on this subject appear much less precise and explicit than they appear to him; and that the inference which he would draw from the words of Cicero seems not to flow necessarily from the sense of those words. That Plato believed God to have framed the heaven and the earth, and to have fashioned all nature, is a position which as far as we know, has never been controverted; but between framing or fashioning the chaos or ἄναξ ἀρχήν, and calling the universe into existence from non-entity, there is an infinite and an obvious difference. The distinction made by Cicero between the God of Plato and the God of Aristotle is a just distinction, but it will not bear the superstructure which the learned doctor builds upon it. Aristotle maintained the eternity of the world in its present form. Plato certainly taught that the first matter was in time reduced from a chaotic state into form by the power of the Demiurgus; but we have seen nothing in his writings which explicitly declares his belief that the first matter was itself created.

The learned Cudworth, who wished, like Dr Ogilvie, to find a coincidence of doctrine between the theology of Plato and that of the Gospel, strained all his faculties to prove that his favourite philosopher taught a proper creation; but he laboured in vain. He gives a number of quotations in support of his position; of which we shall here insert only those two upon which Dr Ogilvie seems to lay the greatest stress. Plato says the author of the Intellectual System, calls the one God (A) ὁ παντὸς καὶ τοῦτος, καὶ πάντα ταῦτα ἐν εὐγενείᾳ ταῖς ἐν ἀδύναμοις, καὶ ἴσως ἐν ἀναγεννήσεις—He that makes earth, and heaven, and the gods, and doth all things both in heaven, and hell, and under the earth. And, again, "he by whose efficiency the things of the world (ὑπερέχοντα, προτερεῖν αὐτοῦ) were afterwards made when they were not before." Both Cudworth and Ogilvie think this last sentence an explicit declaration of Plato's belief in the creative power of God; but that they are mistaken has been evinced by Mosheim with a force of argument which will admit of no reply. In that part of the Sophist from which the quotation is taken, Plato considers the δυναμικὴ ἀναγεννήσις, of which he is treating, as belonging both to God and to man; and he defines it in general to be "a certain power which is the cause that things may afterwards be which were not before." Cudworth wishes to confine this definition to the divine power; and adds from himself to the text which he quotes the following words, which are not in Plato, or from an antecedent non-existence brought forth into being! That the incomparable author intended to deceive his reader, we are far from imagining: his zeal for Platonism had deceived himself. Plato's definition comprehends the δυναμικὴ ἀναγεννήσις as Mosheim well of man as of God; and therefore cannot infer a creative power anywhere, unless the father of the academical system, my was so very absurd as to suppose human artifices the creators of those machines which they have invented and made! Mosheim thinks that Cudworth was misled by too implicit a confidence in Ficinus; and it is not impossible that Dr Ogilvie may have been swayed by the authority, great indeed, of the author of the Intellectual System.

That intellect existed antecedent to all bodies is indeed a Platonic dogma, from which Dr Ogilvie, after Cudworth, wishes to infer that the doctrine of the creation was taught in the academy; but Dr Ogilvie knows, and no man knew better than Cudworth, that Plato, with every other Greek philosopher, distinguished between body and matter; and that though he held the priority of intellect to the former, it by no means follows that he believed it to have existed antecedent to the latter. That he believed mind, or rather soul (for he distinguishes between the two), to be the cause or principle of motion, cannot be denied; but we are not therefore authorized to conclude, that he likewise believed it to be the cause of the existence of matter. That he believed mind to be the most ancient of all things, taking the word things in the most absolute sense, cannot be true, since by Dr Ogilvie's own acknowledgement he held the existence and eternity of ideas, not to add that he believed ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐν τοῖς ἀρχαῖς—the first hypostasis in his trinity, to be superior to mind and prior to it, though not in time, yet in the order of nature. When therefore he calls mind the most ancient of all things, he must be supposed to mean only, that it is more ancient than all bodies and inferior souls. It is no reflection on the character of Plato that he could not, by the efforts of his own reason, acquire any notion of a proper creation; since we, who have the advantage of his writings, and of writings

(A) Mosheim affirms that this quotation is nowhere to be found in the writings of Plato. He therefore at first suspected that the learned author, in looking hastily over Plato's tenth book De Legibus, had transferred to God what is there said of the anima mundi, leading by its own motions every thing in the heaven, the earth, and the sea, and that he had added something of his own. He dropped that opinion, however, when he found Plato, in the tenth book of his Republic, declaring it to be as easy for God to produce the sun, moon, stars, and earth, &c. from himself, as it is for us to produce the image of ourselves, and whatever else we please, only by interposing a looking glass. In all this power, however, there is nothing similar to that of creation. writings infinitely more valuable, to instruct us, find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to conceive how any thing can begin to be. We believe the fact on the authority of revelation; but should certainly have never agitated such a question, had it not been stated to us by writers inspired with celestial wisdom.

In the Platonic cosmogony we cannot therefore doubt but that the eternity of the ἀναγέλλεις was taken for granted. Whether it was an eternal and necessary emanation from an eternal mind, is not perhaps quite so evident, though our own opinion is, that it was believed to be self-existent. But be this as it may, which is not worth disputing, one thing is certain, that Plato did not believe it to have a single form or quality which it did not receive either from the Demiurge or the Physis—the second or third person of this trinity. Except Aristotle, all the Greek philosophers, who were not materialists, held nearly the same opinions respecting the origin of the world; so that in examining their systems we shall be greatly misled if we understand the terms incorporeal and immaterial as at all synonymous. It was also a doctrine of Plato, that there is in matter a necessary but blind and refractory force; and that hence arises a propensity in matter to disorder and deformity, which is the cause of all the imperfection which appears in the works of God, and the origin of evil. On this subject Plato writes with wonderful obscurity: but, as far as we are able to trace his conceptions, he appears to have thought, that matter, from its nature, resists the will of the Supreme Artificer, so that he cannot perfectly execute his designs; and that this is the cause of the mixture of good and evil which is found in the material world.

Plato, however, was no materialist. He taught, that there is an intelligent cause, which is the origin of all spiritual being, and the former of the material world. The nature of this great being he pronounced it difficult to discover, and when discovered, impossible to divulge. The existence of God he inferred from the marks of intelligence, which appear in the form and arrangement of bodies in the visible world: and from the unity of the material system he concluded, that the mind by which it was formed must be one. God, according to Plato, is the supreme intelligence, incorporeal, without beginning, end, or change, and capable of being perceived only by the mind. He certainly distinguished the Deity not only from body, and whatever has corporeal qualities, but from matter itself, from which all things are made. He also ascribed to him all those qualities which modern philosophers ascribe to immaterial substance: and conceived him to be in his nature simple, unencumbered in space, the author of all regulated motion, and, in fine, possessed of intelligence in the highest perfection.

His notions of God are indeed exceedingly refined, and such as it is difficult to suppose that he could ever have acquired but from some obscure remains of primeval tradition, gleaned perhaps from the priests of Egypt or from the philosophers of the East. In the Divine Nature he certainly believed that there are two, and probably that there are three, hypostases, whom he called Platonic τοῦ εὐ and τοῦ ἐν, νοῦς and ψυχή. The first he considered as self-existent, and elevated far above all mind and all knowledge; calling him, by way of eminence, the being, or the one. The only attribute which he acknowledged in this person was goodness; and therefore he frequently styles him τὸ καλόν—the good, or essential goodness. The second he considered as mind, the wisdom or reason of the first, and the maker of the world; and therefore he styles him νοῦς, λόγος, and δημιουργός. The third he always speaks of as the soul of the world; and hence he calls him ψυχή, or ψυχή τοῦ καλοῦ. He taught that the second is a necessary emanation from the first, and the third from the second, or perhaps from the first and second.

Some have indeed pretended, that the Trinity, which is commonly called Platonic, was a fiction of the later Platonists, unknown to the founder of the school: but any person who shall take the trouble to study the writings of Plato, will find abundant evidence that he really asserted a triad of divine hypostases, all concerned in the formation and government of the world. Thus in his 10th book of Laws, where he undertakes to prove the existence of a Deity in opposition to atheists, he affords no higher in the demonstration than to the νοῦς or mundane soul, which he held to be the immediate and proper cause of all the motion that is in the world. But in other parts of his writings he frequently asserts, as superior to the self-moving principle, an immoveable νοῦς or intellect, which was properly the demiurge or framer of the world; and above this hypostasis one most simple and absolutely perfect being, who is considered in his Theology as ὁ θεὸς, the original deity, in contradiction from the others, who are only ὁ θεὸς τοῦ θεοῦ. These doctrines are to be gathered from his works at large, particularly from the Timaeus, Philebus, Sophista and Epinomis: but there is a passage in his second epistle to Dionysius, apparently written in answer to a letter, in which that monarch had required him to give a more explicit account than he had formerly done of the nature of God, in which the doctrine of a Trinity seems to be directly asserted. "After having said that he meant to wrap up his meaning in such obscurity, as that an adept only should fully comprehend it, he adds expressions to the following import: 'The Lord of Nature is surrounded on all sides by his works: whatever is exists by his permission: he is the fountain and source of excellence: around the second person are placed things of the second order; and around the third those of the third degree (π)." Of this obscure passage a very satisfactory explanation is given in Dr Ogilvie's Theology of Plato, to which the narrow limits prescribed to such articles as this compel us to refer the reader. We shall only say, that the account which we have given of the Platonic trinity is ably supported by the doctor.

In treating of the eternal emanation of the second and third hypostases from the first, the philosophers of the academy compare them to light and heat proceeding from the sun. Plato himself, as quoted by Dr Cudworth, illustrates his doctrine by the same comparison. Platonism. For τὸν ἀρχαῖον, or the first hypostasis, is in the intellectual world the same (he says) to intellect and intelligibles that the sun is in the corporeal world to vision and visibles; for as the sun is not vision itself but the cause of vision, and as that light by which we see is not the sun but only a thing like the sun; so neither is the Supreme or Highest Good properly knowledge, but the cause of knowledge; nor is intellect, considered as such, the best and most perfect being, but only a being having the form of perfection." Again, "as the sun causes other things not only to become visible but also to be generated; so the Supreme Good gives to things not only their capability of being known, but also their very essences by which they subsist; for this fountain of the Deity, this highest good, is not itself properly essence, but above essence, transcending it in respect both of dignity and of power."

The resemblance which this trinity of Plato bears to that revealed in the gospel must be observed by every attentive reader; but the two doctrines are likewise in some respects exceedingly dissimilar. The third hypostasis in the Platonic system appears in no point of view co-ordinate with the first or second. Indeed the first is elevated far above the second, and the third sunk still farther beneath it, being considered as a mere soul immersed in matter, and forming with the corporeal world, to which it is united, one compound animal. Nay, it does not appear perfectly clear, that Plato considered his ὑψότης τοῦ νοῦν as a pure spirit, or as having subsisted from eternity as a distinct Hypostasis. "This governing spirit, of whom the earth, properly so called, is the body, constituted, according to our author's philosophy, of the same and the other; that is, of the first matter, and of pure intelligence, framed to actuate the machinery of nature. The Supreme Being placed him in the middle of the earth; which, in the vivid idea of Plato, seemed itself to live, in consequence of an influence that was felt in every part of it. From this seat his power is represented as being extended on all sides to the utmost limit of the heavens; conferring life, and preserving harmony in the various and complicated parts of the universe. Upon this being God is said to have looked with peculiar complacency after having formed him as an image of himself, and to have given beauty and perfect proportion to the mansion which he was destined to occupy. According to the doctrine of Timaeus, the Supreme Being struck out from this original mind innumerable spirits of inferior order, endowed with principles of reason; and he committed to divinities of secondary rank the task of investing these in material forms, and of dispersing them as inhabitants of the sun, moon, and other celestial bodies. He taught also, that at death the human soul is reunited to the ὑψότης τοῦ νοῦν, as to the source from which it originally came."

Such is the third person of the Platonic triad, as we find his nature and attributes very accurately stated by Dr Ogilvie; and the Christian philosopher, who has no particular system to support, will not require another proof that the triad of Plato differs exceedingly from the Trinity of the Scriptures. Indeed the third hypostasis in this triad has so much the appearance of all that the ancients could mean by that which we call a creature, that the learned Cudworth, who wished, it is difficult to conceive for what reason, to find the sublimest mystery of the Christian faith explicitly taught in the writings of a pagan philosopher, was forced to suppose that Plato held a double ψυχή, or soul, one ψυχήν, incorporated with the material world, and the other ψυχήν or supramundane, which is not the soul but the governor of the universe. We call this a mere hypothesis; for though the author displays vast erudition, and adduces many quotations in which this double ψυχή is plainly mentioned, yet all those quotations are taken from Platonists who lived after the propagation of the gospel, and who, calling themselves eclectic, freely stole from every sect such dogmas as they could incorporate with their own system, and then attributed those dogmas to their master. In the writings of Plato himself, there is not so much as an allusion to this supramundane ψυχή; and it is for this reason (the ὑψότης, of which he treats being so very inferior to the ὑψότης τοῦ νοῦν) that we have expressed with hesitation his Synt. Inte. belief of three hypostases in the divine nature. Yet that c. 4. § 36 he did admit so many, seems more than probable both from the passage illustrated by Dr Ogilvie, and from the attempt of Plotinus, one of his followers, to demonstrate that the number can be neither greater nor less. That his doctrine on this subject should be inaccurate and erroneous, can excite no wonder; whilst it must be confessed to have such a resemblance to the truth, and to be so incapable of being proved by reasoning from effects to causes, that we could not doubt of his having inherited it by tradition, even though we had not complete evidence that something very similar to it was taught long before him, not only by Pythagoras and Parmenides, but by the philosophers of the east.

We have said that the Demiurgus was the maker of the world from the first matter which had existed from eternity; but in Plato's cosmogony there is another principle, more mysterious, if possible, than anything which we have yet mentioned. This is his intellectual system of ideas, which it is not easy to collect from his writings, whether he considered as independent existences, or only as archetypal forms, which had subsisted from eternity in the λόγος or divine intellect. On this subject he writes with such exceeding obscurity, that men of the first eminence, both among the ancients and the moderns, have differed about his real meaning. Some have supposed, that by ideas he meant real beings subsisting from eternity, independent of all minds, and separate from all matter; and that of these ideas he conceived some to be living and others to be without life. In this manner his doctrine is interpreted by Tertullian* among * Lib. the ancients, and by the celebrated Brucker † among Anim. the moderns; and not by them only, but by many † Hippo. Delib. others equally learned, candid, and acute. Cudworth, on the other hand, with his annotator Motheim, contend, that by his ideal world Plato meant nothing more than that there existed from eternity in the λόγος or mind of God a notion or conception of every thing which was in time to be made. This is certainly much more probable in itself, than that a man of enlarged understanding should have supposed, that there are somewhere in extramundane space real living incorporeal beings eating and drinking, which are the ideas of all the animals which ever have been or ever will be eating and drinking in this world. Yet Motheim candidly acknowledges, that if the controversy were to be decided by the votes of the learned, he is doubtful whether it would be given for or against him; and Cudworth, though he pleads. pleads the cause of his master with much ingenuity, owns, that on this subject his language cannot be vindicated. This indeed is most true; for Plato contends, that his ideas are not only the objects of science, but also the proper or physical causes of all things here below; that the idea of similitude is the cause of the resemblance between two globes; and the idea of dissimilitude, the cause that a globe does not resemble a pyramid; he likewise calls them surae, effigies or substances, and many of his followers have pronounced them to be animals.

These wonderful expressions incline us to adopt with some hesitation the opinion stated by Dr Enfield. This historian of philosophy having observed, that some of the admirers of Plato contend, that by ideas existing in the reason of God, nothing more is meant than conceptions formed in the Divine mind, controverts this opinion with much effect. "By ideas, Plato (says he) appears to have meant something much more mysterious; namely, patterns or archetypes subsisting by themselves, as real beings, ovres ovla in the Divine reason, as in their original and eternal region, and infusing thence to give form to sensible things, and to become objects of contemplation and science to rational beings. It is the doctrine of the Timaeus, that ὁ λογικός τῷ Θεῷ, the reason of God, comprehends exemplars of all things, and that this reason is one of the primary causes of things. Plutarch says, that Plato supposes three principles, God, Matter, and Idea. Justin Martyr, Pseudo-Origen, and others, affirm the same thing.

"That this is the true Platonic doctrine of ideas will appear probable, if we attend to the manner in which Plato framed his system of opinions concerning the origin of things. Having been from his youth (says Aristotle) conversant with Cratylus, a disciple of Heraclitus, and instructed in the doctrine of that school, that all sensible things are variable, and cannot be proper objects of science, he reasonably concluded, that if there be any such thing as science, there must exist, besides sensible objects, certain permanent natures, perceptible only by the intellect. Such natures, divine in their origin, and eternal and immutable in their existence, he admitted into his system, and called them ideas. Visible things were regarded by Plato as fleeting shades, and ideas as the only permanent substances. These he conceived to be the proper objects of science to a mind raised by divine contemplation above the perpetually varying scenes of the material world."

It was a fundamental doctrine in the system of Plato, that the Deity formed the material world after a perfect model, consisting of those ideas which had eternally subsisted in his own reason; and yet, with some appearance of contradiction, he calls this model "self-existent, indivisible, and eternally generated." Nay, he talks of it as being intelligent as well as eternal, and wholly different from the transcripts, which are subjected to our inspection. There is so much mystery, confusion, and apparent absurdity, in the whole of this system, as it has come down to us, that we must suppose the friends of Plato to have been entrusted with a key to his esoteric doctrines, which has long been lost, otherwise it would be difficult to conceive how that philosopher could have had so many admirers.

With almost every ancient theft of Greece the founder of the academy believed in an order of beings called demons, which were superior to the souls of men, and struck off by the Demiurgus from the foul of the world.

Of these the reader will find some account elsewhere: (see Daemon and Polytheism). We mention them at present because they make an important appearance in Plato's system of physics, which was built upon them and upon the doctrine which has been stated concerning God, matter, and ideas. He taught, that the visible world was formed by the Supreme Architect, uniting eternal and immutable ideas to the first matter; that the universe is one animated being*, including within its limits all animated natures; that, in the formation of the visible and tangible world, fire and earth were first formed, and were afterwards united by means of air and water; and from perfect parts one perfect whole was produced, of a spherical figure, as most beautiful in itself, and best suited to contain all other figures†; that the elementary parts of the world are of regular geometrical forms, the particles of earth being cubical, those of fire pyramidal, those of air in the form of an octahedron, and those of water in that of an icosahedron; that these are adjusted in number, measure, and power, in perfect conformity to the geometrical laws of proportion; that the soul which pervades this sphere is the cause of its revolution round its centre; and, lastly, that the world will remain for ever, but that by the action of its animating principle, it accomplishes certain periods, within which every thing returns to its ancient place and state. This periodical revolution of nature is called the Platonic or great year. See the preceding article.

The metaphysical doctrines of Plato, which treat of the human soul, and the principles of his system of ethics, have been detailed in other articles (See Metaphysics, Part III. chap. iv.; and Moral Philosophy, No. 6): but it is worthy of observation in this place, that, preparatory to the study of all philosophy, he required from his disciples a knowledge of the elements of mathematics. In his Republic, he makes Glaucus, one of the speakers, recommend them for their usefulness in human life. "Arithmetic for accounts and distributions; geometry for encampments and fortifications; music for solemn festivals in honour of the gods; and astronomy for agriculture, for navigation, and the like. Socrates, on his part, denies not the truth of all this, but still intimates that they were capable of answering and more sublime. 'You are pleasant (says he) in your seeming to fear the multitude, lest you should be thought to enjoy certain sciences that are useless. 'Tis indeed no contemptible matter, though a difficult one, to believe, that through these particular sciences the soul has an organ purified and enlightened, which is destroyed and blinded by studies of other kinds; an organ better worth saving than a thousand eyes, in as much as truth becomes visible through this alone."

"Concerning policy, Plato has written at large in his Republic and in his Dialogue on Laws. He was so much enamoured with his own conceptions on this subject, that it was chiefly the hope of having an opportunity to realise his plan of a republic which induced him to visit the court of Dionysius. But they who are conversant with mankind, and capable of calmly investigating the springs of human actions, will easily perceive that his projects were chimerical, and could only have originated in a mind replete with philosophical enthusiasm. Of this nothing can be a clearer proof than the design of admi- Platonists in his republic a community of women, in order to give reason an entire control over desire. The main object of his political institutions appears to have been, the subjugation of the passions and appetites, by means of the abstract contemplation of ideas. A system of policy, raised upon such fanciful grounds, cannot merit a more distinct consideration."

Such is genuine Platonism as it was taught in the old academy by the founder of the school and his immediate followers; but when Arcesilaus was placed at the head of the academies, great innovations were introduced both into their doctrines and into their mode of teaching (see Arcesilaus). This man was therefore considered as the founder of what was afterwards called the middle academy. Being a professed skeptic, he carried his maxim of uncertainty to such a height, as to alarm the general body of philosophers, offend the governors of the state, and bring just odium upon the very name of the academy. At length Carneades, one of the disciples of this school, relinquishing some of the more obnoxious tenets of Arcesilaus, founded what has been called the new academy with very little improvement on the principles of the middle. See Carneades.

Under one or other of these forms Platonism found its way into the Roman republic. Cicero was a Platonist, and one of the greatest ornaments of the school. A school of Platonists was likewise founded in Alexandria in the second century of the Christian era; but their doctrines differed in many particulars from those taught in the three academies. They professed to seek truth wherever they could find it, and to collect their dogmas from every school. They endeavoured to bend some of the principles of Plato into a conformity with the doctrines of the gospel; and they incorporated with the whole many of the maxims of Aristotle and Zeno, and not a few of the fictions of the east. Their system was therefore extremely heterogeneous, and seldom so rational as that of the philosopher after whose name they were called, and of whose doctrines we have given so copious a detail. See Ammonius, Eclectics, and Plotinus.