The Platonic method, the dialectic process, as its author calls it, searches in particular, variable, contingent things, for what they also have general, durable, one, that is to say, their Idea, and is thus elevated to Ideas, as to the only true objects of intelligence, in order to be elevated still from these Ideas, which are arranged in an admirable hierarchy, to the first of all, beyond which intelligence has nothing more to conceive, nothing more to seek. By rejecting in finite things their limit, their individuality, we attain genera, Ideas, and, by them, their sovereign principle. But this principle is not the last of genera, nor the last of abstractions; it is a real and substantial principle.[79] The God of Plato is not called merely unity, he is called the Good; he is not the lifeless substance of the Eleatics;[80] he is endowed with _life and movement_;[81] strong expressions that show how much the God of the Platonic metaphysics differs from that of mysticism. This God is the _father of the world_.[82] He is also the father of truth, that light of spirits.[83] He dwells in the midst of Ideas _which make him a true God inasmuch as he is with them_.[84] He possesses _august and holy intelligence_.[85] He has made the world without any external necessity, and for the sole reason that he is good.[86] In fine, he is beauty without mixture, unalterable, immortal, that makes him who has caught a glimpse of it disdain all earthly beauties.[87] The beautiful, the absolute good, is too dazzling to be looked on directly by the eye of mortal; it must at first be contemplated in the images that reveal it to us, in truth, in beauty, in justice, as they are met here below, and among men, as the eye of one who has been a chained captive from infancy, must be gradually habituated to the light of the sun.[88] Our reason, enlightened by true science, can perceive this light of spirits; reason rightly led can go to God, and there is no need, in order to reach him, of a particular and mysterious faculty.