The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers; The Gifford Lectures Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ... LECTURE NINTH. THE FINAL RESULTS OF THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY. In the last two lectures I attempted to show the nature of the transition by which Plato passes from the general doctrine that the idea or universal is the real, to the doctrine that the ultimate reality is to be found in mind. Absolute Being, 'that which is in the highest sense of the word, ' must be a principle which transcends the opposition, maintained by the earlier schools, between being and becoming, between the one and the many; and which also transcends the new opposition, which was brought into view by Socrates, between the subject and the object. It cannot be conceived as rest without motion, as permanence without activity; but as little can it be conceived as an objective ideal principle without consciousness or intelligence; or, on the other hand, as a mere subjective thought or state of consciousness without objective reality. If it is intelligence, it is not intelligence as separated by abstraction from the intelligible world, but as presupposing and including it. It is 'divine reason, ' as the ultimate unity of all the ideas of things, and so as the principle at once of knowing and of being. But this involves another transition. If mind be the principle of the universe, we cannot contemplate all the parts of the universe as equally far from it and equally near to it. There are ideal principles in all things, but the principle of life and consciousness raises the beings that partake in it above other beings or things; for all soul is divine and "has the care of all inanimate or soulless being, and traverses the whole universe,"1 taking one form at one time and another at another. Every soul, as such, is a self-determining being, whose life cannot be overpowered or...