Chapter XIX. That Plato Agreed With the Hebrews in Thinking That This World is an Image of One More Divine

THE answer of God said to Moses: ‘See, thou make all things after the pattern which was shown to thee in the mount.’ [1] And the sacred word stated more plainly, ‘Who served a copy and shadow of the heavenly things;’ [2] and taught that the symbols in the writings of Moses plainly contain an image of the more divine realities in the intelligible world. Now then listen how Plato also gives similar interpretations in the sixth Book of the Republic,writing as follows;

[P] [3] ‘The philosopher then by communing with God and with the order of the world becomes both orderly and divine, as far as is possible to man: slander however is rife in all things.

‘In all indeed.

‘If therefore, said I, it ever becomes necessary for him to study how to introduce what he sees in yonder world into the habits of mankind both in private and in public life, and so to mould others as well as himself, do you think that he will be found a bad artificer of temperance and justice and civic virtue in general?

‘Certainly not, said he.

‘But then if the multitude understand that what we say about him is true, will they be angry with the philosophers? And will they disbelieve us when we say that a State can never be prosperous, unless it be planned by artists who follow the divine pattern?

‘They will not be angry, said he, if they understand it. But now what kind of plan do you mean?

‘They would take, said I, a State and the moral nature of man for a tablet, and first of all would make a clean board, which is not at all an easy matter. You know, however, that the philosophers would differ at once from other men on this point, that they would be unwilling to touch either individual or State, or to frame laws, before they had either received a clean board, or themselves had made it so,

‘Yes, and rightly, said he.

‘Next then do you not think they would sketch out the plan of the constitution?

‘Of course.

‘Then, I suppose, in working it out, they would frequently look to this side and to that, both to what is essentially just and beautiful and temperate and everything of that kind, and then to. the other side, to what is found in men, and would put upon their tablet the likeness of a man by making a combination and mixture of the various ways of life, and taking their design from that which, when embodied in man, Homer called the form and likeness of God.[4]

‘Rightly, said he.

‘And one feature, I suppose, they would wipe out, and paint in another, until they made the human characters as pleasing as possible to God.’