The assertion that Plato taught "the eternity of matter," and that consequently he did not arrive at the idea of a Supreme and Ultimate Cause, is incapable of proof. The term ὕλη=matter does not occur in the writings of Plato, or, indeed, of any of his predecessors, and is peculiarly Aristotelian. The ground of the world of sense is called by Plato "the receptacle" (ὑποδοχή), "the nurse" (τιθήνη) of all that is produced, and was apparently identified, in his mind, with _pure space_--a logical rather than a physical entity--the mere negative condition and medium of Divine manifestation. He never regards it as a "cause," or ascribes to it any efficiency. We grant that he places this very indefinite something (ὁποιονοῦν τι) out of the sphere of temporal origination; but it must be borne in mind that he speaks of "creation in eternity" as well as of "creation in time;" and of time itself, though created, as "an eternal image of the generating Father."[363] This one thing, at any rate, can not be denied, that Plato recognizes creation in its fullest sense as the act of God. The admission that something has always existed besides the Deity, as a mere logical condition of the exercise of divine power (_e.g._, space), would not invalidate the argument for the existence of God. The proof of the Divine Existence, as Chalmers has shown, does not rest on the existence of matter, but on the orderly arrangement of matter; and the grand question of Theism is not whether the _matter of the world_, but whether the _present order of the world_ had a commencement.[364] 2d. Doubt is cast by our author upon the validity of "_the principle of the Unconditioned or the Infinite_." "Supposing it were conceded that some faint glimmering of this great truth [the existence of a First Cause] might, by induction, have been discovered by contemplative minds, by what means could they have _demonstrated_ to themselves that he is eternal, self-existent, immortal, and independent?"[365] "Between things visible and invisible, time and eternity, beings finite and beings infinite, objects of sense and objects of faith, _the connection is not perceptible_ to human observation. Though we push our researches, therefore, to the extreme point whither the light of nature can carry us, they will in the end be abruptly terminated, and we must stop short at an immeasurable distance between the creature and the Creator."[366] [Footnote 363: Plato, "Timæus," § xiv.] [Footnote 364: Chalmers's "Natural Theology," bk. i. ch. v.; also Mahan's "Natural Theology," pp. 21-23.] [Footnote 365: Watson's "Institutes of Theol.," vol. i. p. 274.] [Footnote 366: Id., ib., vol. i. p. 273.]