in the other. Hence he has implicitly answered the difficulty with which
he started, of how the one could remain one and yet be divided among many
individuals, or 'how ideas could be in and out of themselves,' and the
like. Secondly, that in this mixed class we find the idea of beauty.
Good, when exhibited under the aspect of measure or symmetry, becomes
beauty. And if we translate his language into corresponding modern terms,
we shall not be far wrong in saying that here, as well as in the Republic,
Plato conceives beauty under the idea of proportion.

4. Last and highest in the list of principles or elements is the cause of
the union of the finite and infinite, to which Plato ascribes the order of
the world. Reasoning from man to the universe, he argues that as there is
a mind in the one, there must be a mind in the other, which he identifies
with the royal mind of Zeus. This is the first cause of which 'our
ancestors spoke,' as he says, appealing to tradition, in the Philebus as
well as in the Timaeus. The 'one and many' is also supposed to have been
revealed by tradition. For the mythical element has not altogether
disappeared.

Some characteristic differences may here be noted, which distinguish the
ancient from the modern mode of conceiving God.

a. To Plato, the idea of God or mind is both personal and impersonal. Nor
in ascribing, as appears to us, both these attributes to him, and in
speaking of God both in the masculine and neuter gender, did he seem to
himself inconsistent. For the difference between the personal and
impersonal was not marked to him as to ourselves. We make a fundamental
distinction between a thing and a person, while to Plato, by the help of
various intermediate abstractions, such as end, good, cause, they appear
almost to meet in one, or to be two aspects of the same. Hence, without