But I believe there to have been another reason of greater force with him for his not having presented as a whole his conclusions on this central doctrine of all. It was not merely that the fate of his master Socrates was ever before him,(370) but the singular position which he held with regard to the established worship. He wished to correct, not to destroy it; he wished to reduce it to monotheism, and yet to preserve polytheism. The two are bound together in his mind. If then his writings be carefully analysed, and every reference to the Supreme Being put together into a sort of mosaic,(371) we should find the following picture. The everlasting essence of things, with which Philosophy deals, is the highest object. Ideas are those everlasting gods after the pattern of which the world and all things which are in it are formed, and the Godhead, taken absolutely, is not distinct from the highest Idea. Plato sets forth the causality of Ideas and the sway of reason in the world together with the impossibility to explain what is generated save by an Ingenerate, motion save by a soul, and the ordered disposition of the world, working out a purpose, save by reason; and in all which he declares respecting the Godhead, the Idea of Good, of the highest metaphysical and ethical perfection, is his guiding-point. As this highest Idea stands at the head of all Ideas as the cause of all being and knowledge, so the one everlasting invisible God, the Former and Father of all things, stands at the head of all the gods, alike difficult to find and to describe. Just as the above Idea is distinguished by the conception of the Good, so Plato selects goodness as God’s most essential attribute. It is on this ground that he maintains the Godhead to be absolutely good and upright, and its operation to be merely good and upright; against the old notion which imputed envy to it, and derived evil from it. Again, in opposition to the fabulous appearances of the gods, it is from the goodness of the Godhead that he deduces its unchangeableness, inasmuch as what is perfect can neither be changed by anything else, nor change itself, and so become worse. He adds, the Godhead will never show itself to men other than it is, since all falsehood is foreign to it; inasmuch as to falsehood in the properest sense, that is, ignorance and self-deception, it is not exposed, and has no need to deceive others. He extols the divine perfection, to which no beauty and no excellence is wanting; the divine power, which embraces everything and can do everything which is possible, that is, which does not involve a moral or a metaphysical contradiction: for instance, it is impossible for God to wish to change Himself, for evil to cease, and from the doctrine respecting the forming of the world and matter it is clear that the divine activity in producing is limited by the nature of the finite.(372) He extols the divine wisdom which disposes all