XLVII. I turned to him. ‘Stirred us, Philippus? It has confounded me, to think that before so large and so grave a company I should seem so to forget my years as with a show of plausible rhetoric to upset and disturb any view about religion which is established in truth and holiness. I will [Sidenote: F] defend myself by producing Plato, as witness and advocate in one. Plato[194] found fault with old Anaxagoras because he attached himself too much to physical causes, and because, in his constant pursuit of the working of necessary law in all which affects bodies, he dismissed the better causes or principles, the Final and the Efficient. He himself, first of the philosophers or more than any of them, went into both sets, attributing to God the origin of all things which are according to reason, but [Sidenote: 436] refusing to deprive matter of the causes necessary for their production; he recognized that in some such way the whole sensible universe is organized, yet is not pure nor free from admixture, but has its origin in matter involved with reason. Now look at this first in the case of the artists. Take, for instance, the famous base or stand, called by Herodotus[195] “cup-stand”, of the bowl here; it had its physical causes, iron, steel, fire to soften and water to temper it, without all which the object could not possibly be produced; but the more potent principle [Sidenote: B] which stirred the others and was working through them, was furnished to it by Art and Reason. Now the name of the maker or artificer has been inscribed on these several figures or works of imitation: _Here Polygnotus, son of Aglaophon, The Thasian, painted towering Ilion’s sack._ You may see it for yourself. But without pigments crushed and compounded it would be impossible to present such a composition to the eye. Does then the man who seeks to grasp the physical principle, investigating and laying down the effects and [Sidenote: C] the changes of a mixture of Sinopic red earth with yellow, or Melian gray with black, rob the painter of his glory? Or he who follows out the processes of tempering or softening steel, how it is weakened by fire and submits itself to be drawn and hammered, then, plunged into fresh water and compressed and densified by the cold, because of the softness and rarefication induced by the fire, acquires temper and consistence—“the iron’s might” Homer[196] calls it—does he any the less preserve for the artist his part in the causation? I think not! There [Sidenote: D] are those who criticize the properties of medical appliances; they do not overthrow the art of Medicine. As, for the matter of that, Plato[197] in proving that we see by means of the flash of our eyes mingling with that of the sun, and hear by the pulsations of the air, did not rule out the fact that we have received our sight and our hearing in accordance with Reason and Providence.