happiness of men in this and in a former cycle of existence is intended to
elicit this contrast between the golden age and 'the life under Zeus' which
is our own. To confuse the divine and human, or hastily apply one to the
other, is a 'tremendous error.' Of the ideal or divine government of the
world we can form no true or adequate conception; and this our mixed state
of life, in which we are partly left to ourselves, but not wholly deserted
by the gods, may contain some higher elements of good and knowledge than
could have existed in the days of innocence under the rule of Cronos. So
we may venture slightly to enlarge a Platonic thought which admits of a
further application to Christian theology. Here are suggested also the
distinctions between God causing and permitting evil, and between his more
and less immediate government of the world.

II. The dialectical interest of the Statesman seems to contend in Plato's
mind with the political; the dialogue might have been designated by two
equally descriptive titles--either the 'Statesman,' or 'Concerning Method.'
Dialectic, which in the earlier writings of Plato is a revival of the
Socratic question and answer applied to definition, is now occupied with
classification; there is nothing in which he takes greater delight than in
processes of division (compare Phaedr.); he pursues them to a length out of
proportion to his main subject, and appears to value them as a dialectical
exercise, and for their own sake. A poetical vision of some order or
hierarchy of ideas or sciences has already been floating before us in the
Symposium and the Republic. And in the Phaedrus this aspect of dialectic
is further sketched out, and the art of rhetoric is based on the division
of the characters of mankind into their several classes. The same love of
divisions is apparent in the Gorgias. But in a well-known passage of the
Philebus occurs the first criticism on the nature of classification. There
we are exhorted not to fall into the common error of passing from unity to
infinity, but to find the intermediate classes; and we are reminded that in