Mr. Grote has further mentioned a very striking fact, which is, that before the Christian era, the Demiurgus of Plato was received by the Hellenizing Jews at Alexandria as a conception kindred to the God of Moses. His statement, in substance the same as that previously made by a Continental critic, Gfrörer, is so interesting and important that I quote his words: "But though the idea of a pre-kosmic Demiurgus found little favor among the Grecian schools of philosophy before the Christian era, it was greatly welcomed among the Hellenizing Jews at Alexandria, from Aristobulus (about B. C. 150) down to Philo. It formed the suitable point of conjunction between Hellenic and Judaic speculation. The marked distinction drawn by Plato between the Demiurgus, and the constructed or generated Kosmos, with its in-dwelling gods, provided a suitable place for the Supreme God of the Jews, degrading the pagan gods by comparison. The 'Timæus' was compared with the book of Genesis, from which it was even affirmed that Plato had copied. He received the denomination of the Atticising Moses--Moses writing in Attic Greek. It was thus that the Platonic 'Timæus' became the medium of transition from the polytheistic theology, which served as philosophy among the early ages of Greece, to the omnipotent monotheism to which philosophy became subordinated after the Christian era."[102] Perhaps there is no more remarkable fact than this in the whole history of philosophical speculation. Possibly Mr. Spencer would say that it adds another proof to his ghost-theory. But the important fact is that Plato's Demiurgus partakes in no degree of the ghost idea, and, instead of being a modification of that idea, is an original and perfectly independent conception. The Demiurgus of Plato is not a chief spirit evolved in imagination out of a hierarchy of spirits. He is himself the originator and fashioner of the gods, of whom he makes use as ministers in the formation of the bodies of the primitive men, after he has himself formed the souls which are to inhabit them for a season.