Plato continues: “God found the visible” (παραλαβών)—a mythical expression proceeding from the necessity of beginning with an immediate, which, however, as it presents itself, cannot in any way be allowed—“not at rest, but moving in an irregular and disorderly manner; and out of disorder he brought order, considering that this was far better than the other.” From this it appears as if Plato had considered that God was only the δημιοῦργος, _i.e._ the disposer of matter, and that this, being eternal and independent, was found by Him as chaos; but in view of what has been said, this is false. These are not the philosophic doctrines which Plato seriously held, for he speaks here only after the manner of the ordinary conception, and such expressions have hence no philosophic content. It is only the introduction of the subject, bringing us, as it does, to determinations such as matter. Plato then comes in course of his progress to further determinations, and in these we first have the Notion; we must hold to what is speculative in Plato, and not to the first-mentioned ordinary conception. Likewise, when he says that God esteemed order to be the best, the mode of expression is naïve. Nowadays we should ask that God should first be proved; and just as little should we allow the visible to be established without much further ado. What is proved by Plato from this more naïve method of expression is, in the first place, the true determination of the Idea, which only appears later on. It is further said: “God reflecting that of what is visible, the unintelligent (ἀνόητον) could not be fairer than the intelligent (νοῦς), and that intelligence could not exist in anything devoid of soul, for these reasons put intelligence in the soul, and the soul in the body, and so united them that the world became a living and intelligent system, an animal.” We have reality and intelligence, and the soul as the bond connecting the two extremes, without which intelligence could not have part in the visible body; we saw the true reality comprehended by Plato in a similar way in the Phædrus (_supra_, p. 39). “There is, however, only one such animal, for were there two or more, these would be only parts of the one, and only one.”[47]