Plato[BL] not only explains the generation of man, animals, plants, and elements, but even that of heaven and the gods, by reflected representations and images extracted from the Divine Creator, which, by an harmonic motion, are ranged according to the properties of numbers in the most perfect order. The universe, according to him, is a copy of the Deity: time, space, motion, and matter, are images of his attributes; and secondary and particular causes are results of numerical and harmonical qualities of those representations. The world is the most perfect being, and to have a complete perfection it was necessary that it contained every other animal, every possible representation, and every imaginable form, of the creative faculty. The essence of all generation consists in the unity and harmony of the number Three, or of the triangle, viz. that _which_ generates, that _in which_ generation is performed, and that _which is_ engendered. The succession of individuals in the species is only a fugitive image of the immutable eternity of this triangular harmony, the universal prototype of every existence and every generation; for this reason two individuals are required to produce a third, and it is this which constitutes the essential order of father, mother, and child. [BL] See the Timæus. This philosopher is a painter only of ideas; disengaged from matter he elevates into the regions of abstraction, and, losing sight of sensible objects, perceives and contemplates the intellectual alone. One cause, one end, and one sole mode, form the whole of his perceptions. God is the cause, perfection the end, and harmonic representations the modes. What can be a more sublime idea! This plan of philosophy is replete with simplicity, and the views truly noble! but how void and destitute for speculation? We are not purely spiritual beings, nor have we the power to give a real existence to our ideas. Confined to matter, our rather dependent on what causes our sensations, the real substance can never be produced by the abstracted. I answer Plato in his own language, "The Creator realizes every thing he conceives; his perceptions engender existence: the created being, on the contrary, conceives nothing by retrenching them but from reality, and the production of his ideas do not amount to any thing."