Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato

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such types of theology Socrates delivers in the Republic.

All the fables therefore of Plato guarding the truth in concealment, have not even their externally apparent apparatus discordant with our undisciplined and unperverted anticipations of divinity. But they bring with them an image of the mundane From the Latin 'mundus,' meaning the world; referring here to the physical, created universe. composition in which both the apparent beauty is worthy of divinity, and a beauty more divine than this is established in the unapparent lives and powers of its causes.

In the next place, that the reader may see whence and from what dialogues principally the theological dogmas of Plato may be collected, I shall present him with the following translation of what Proclus has admirably written on this subject.

“The truth (says he) concerning the gods pervades, as I may say, through all the Platonic dialogues, and in all of them conceptions of the first philosophy, venerable, clear, and supernatural, are disseminated, in some more obscurely, but in others more conspicuously;—conceptions which excite those that are in any respect able to partake of them, to the immaterial and separate essence of the gods. And as in each part of the universe and in nature itself, the demiurgus The divine "Craftsman" or "Architect" who, in Platonic philosophy, shapes the physical world according to eternal forms. of all which the world contains established resemblances of the unknown essence of the gods, that all things might be converted to divinity through their alliance with it, in like manner I am of opinion, that the divine intellect of Plato weaves conceptions about the gods with all its progeny, and leaves nothing deprived of the mention of divinity, that from the whole of its offspring a reminiscence of total natures Universal or complete realities, rather than individual or partial parts of existence. may be obtained, and imparted to the genuine lovers of divine concerns.

“But if it be requisite to lay before the reader those dialogues out of many which principally unfold to us the mystic discipline The "mystic discipline" refers to the study of hidden, symbolic, or spiritual truths that go beyond literal interpretation. about the gods, I shall not err in ranking among this number the Phaedo and Phaedrus, the Banquet and the Philebus, and together with these the Sophista and Politicus, the Cratylus and the Timaeus. For all these are full through the whole of themselves, as I may say, of the divine science of Plato. But I should place in the second rank after these, the fable in the Gorgias, and that in the Protagoras, likewise the assertions about the providence of the gods in the Laws, and such things as are delivered about the Fates, or the mother of the Fates, or the circulations of the universe, in the tenth book of the Republic. Again you may, if you please, place in the third rank those Epistles through which we may be able to arrive at the science about divine natures. For in these, mention is made of the three kings; and many other divine dogmas worthy the Platonic theory are delivered. It is necessary therefore, regarding these, to explore in them each order of the gods.

Thus from the Philebus, we may receive the science respecting the one good, and the two first principles of things (bound and infinity) together with the triad subsisting from these. For you will find all these distinctly delivered to us by Plato in that dialogue. But from the Timaeus you may obtain the theory about intelligibles, a divine narration about the demiurgic monad A 'monad' is a single, primary unit; here it refers to the singular divine power that creates and organizes the world., and the most full truth about the mundane gods The divinities associated with the physical world and the celestial bodies.. From the Phaedrus you may learn all the intelligible Things that can only be understood by the mind or intellect, rather than perceived by the senses. and intellectual genera, and the liberated orders of the gods, which are proximately established above the celestial circulations. From the Politicus you may obtain the theory of the fabrication in the heavens, of the periods of the universe, and of the intellectual causes of those periods. But from the Sophista you may learn the whole sublunary Literally "under the moon"; the earthly realm of change, birth, and death, as opposed to the eternal heavens. generation, and the idiom The specific nature, characteristic, or "flavor" of a particular divine power. of the gods who are allotted the sublunary region, and preside over its generations and corruptions. And with respect to each of the gods, we may obtain many sacred conceptions from the Banquet, many from the Cratylus, and many from the Phaedo. For in each of these dialogues more or less mention is made of divine names, from which it is easy for those who are exercised in divine concerns to discover by a reasoning process the idioms of each.

“It is necessary, however, to evince that each of the dogmas accords with Platonic principles and the mystic traditions of theologians. For all the Grecian theology is the progeny of the mystic doctrine of Orpheus; Pythagoras first of all learning from Aglaophemus the origins of the gods, but Plato in the second place receiving an all-perfect science of the divinities from the Pythagoric and Orphic writings. For in the Philebus, referring the theory about the two forms of principles (bound and infinity) to the Pythagoreans, he calls them