[15] It does not distinctly appear what was to become of the rational soul if it finally failed in the conflict with evil, at the lowest end of the transmigration. Being immortal, it could not perish. But in providing for it an opportunity of final success through all the forms of animal life to which it might be condemned, it would seem that Plato was pressed by a reluctance to encounter the idea of endless misery. This point, however, does not obscure his explanation of the process by which species of animals, and a succession of inferior animals, came to exist. [16] Mr. Grote has pointed out that in his other writings, notably in the "Republic" and in the "Leges", Plato is not consistent with this idea that the gods are responsible for the evil that man causes to himself; and that in the "Timæus" he plainly makes the Demiurgus responsible, because he brings, or allows to be brought, an immortal soul down from its star, where it was living pure, intelligent, and in harmony with reason, and makes it incur corruption, disturbance, and stupidity, by junction with a mortal body and two mortal and inferior souls. [17] I have omitted the description of the influence of disease induced by an over-indulgence of appetite, etc., in aiding the process of debasement from the primitive type. The reader can find this influence developed in Grote, or can consult the original Greek of the "Timæus." It would appear that Plato considered the effect of all the appetites, when too much indulged, as tending in the primitive non-sexual type toward the development of that lower kind of animal which the gods saw fit to treat as fit only to become woman. [18] Grote. [19] Grote's "Plato," iii, 282. [20] See, as to the reception of the Platonic Demiurgus by the Alexandrian Jews, first chapter. [21] "Origin of Species," p. 428, American edition, from the sixth English. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1882. [22] Mr. Darwin refers to Mr. Herbert Spencer's theory of "the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation"; and indeed it is apparent that this class of philosophers have constructed a theory which denies the creation of the human mind as a spiritual essence, independent of matter, although some of them may adhere to the idea that it was God who caused matter to evolve out of its own action the substance or existence that we call mind. [23] "Origin of Species," p. 69.