It appears, by Mr. Grote's citations from Gfrörer, that the latter had previously noted what Aristobulus maintained one hundred and fifty years earlier than Philo, namely, that "not only the oldest Grecian poets, Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, etc., but also the most celebrated thinkers, especially Plato, had acquired all their wisdom from a very old translation of the Pentateuch." Neither of these modern critics appears to have accepted the assertion of Aristobulus, and its intrinsic improbability is very great. Certainly the internal evidence of the "Timæus" negatives the assumption that Plato had seen the Pentateuch, for his Demiurgus is not the God of Moses, although it was very natural for the Alexandrian Jews to think they recognized a resemblance. Mr. Grote, moreover, seems to put this matter beyond doubt, for he says that the Platonic "Timæus" _became the medium of transition_ from the polytheism of early Greece to the monotheism of the Christian era. This implies very clearly that Mr. Grote did not consider the Demiurgus of Plato to be either derived from the polytheism of the early Grecian ages, on the one hand, or from the Mosaic Jehovah, on the other hand, but that he considered it a conception which stood between them. The point of resemblance is in the idea of a divine and supreme personal actor in the production of phenomena. It does not seem, therefore, that a philosopher at the present day is confined to the source of the primitive religion, be that source what it may. The primitive religion, whether its origin was fetichism or a belief in ghosts, has imposed no shackles upon our minds. The beliefs of the primitive men may have originated as Mr. Spencer supposes, but the question for us--revelation being laid aside--is just what it was for Plato, the difference being that our means of investigation are superior to his. The grounds of our belief in a personal God are not the same as those on which the uncivilized races formed first the idea of a wandering double emanating from the human body, then conceived of spirits or ghosts, next of different orders of spirits or ghosts, and finally of a chief and supreme spirit. Our materials for sound deduction are not the same as those of the primitive races of mankind, or of the uncivilized tribes of the present day. I have before remarked that the intellectual effort of a savage in striving for the idea of a deity is the same kind of effort as that of the civilized and educated man; but that the difference between them is in the growth and activity of the reasoning power, and in the materials on which it is exercised. While our barbarian predecessors lived in an age of ignorance, we live in an age of knowledge. We are surrounded by extraordinary discoveries, and are possessed of the means of still further research. They had almost no means for investigating physical phenomena. We are, or ought to be, disciplined reasoners. They, on the contrary, while able to