In this Hymn of the Universe (to use a phrase of the rhetor Menander[7] respecting the Platonic Timæus) the prose of Plato is quite as much the vehicle of poetical imagination as the hexameters of Hesiod, Empedokles, or Parmenides. The Gods and Goddesses, whom Timæus invokes at the commencement,[8] supply him with superhuman revelations, like the Muses to Hesiod, or the Goddess of Wisdom to Parmenides. Plato expressly recognises the multiplicity of different statements current, respecting the Gods and the generation of the Universe. He claims no superior credibility for his own. He professes to give us a new doctrine, not less probable than the numerous dissentient opinions already advanced by others, and more acceptable to his own mind. He bids us be content with such a measure of probability, because the limits of our human nature preclude any fuller approach to certainty.[9] It is important to note the modest pretensions here unreservedly announced by Plato as to the conviction and assent of hearers:--so different from the confidence manifested in the Republic, where he hires a herald to proclaim his conclusion--and from the overbearing dogmatism which we read in his Treatise De Legibus, where he is providing a catechism for the schooling of citizens, rather than proofs to be sifted by opponents. He delivers, respecting matters which he admits to be unfathomable, the theory most in harmony with his own religious and poetical predispositions, which he declares to be as probable as any other yet proclaimed. The Xenophontic Sokrates, who disapproved all speculation respecting the origin and structure of the Kosmos, would probably have granted this equal probability, and equal absence of any satisfactory grounds of preferential belief--both to Plato on one side and to the opposing theorists on the other. And another intelligent contemporary, Isokrates, would probably have considered the Platonic Timæus as one among the same class of unprofitable extravagancies, to which he assigns the theories of Herakleitus, Empedokles, Alkmæon, Parmenides, and others.[10] Plato himself (in the Sophistês)[11] characterises the theories of these philosophers as fables recited to an audience of children, without any care to ensure a rational comprehension and assent. _They_ would probably have made the like criticism upon his Timæus. While he treats it as fable to apply to the Gods the human analogy of generation and parentage--they would have considered it only another variety of fable, to apply to them the equally human analogy of constructive fabrication or mixture of ingredients. The language of Xenophon shows that he agreed with his master Sokrates in considering such speculations as not merely unprofitable, but impious.[12] And if the mission from the Gods--constituting Sokrates Cross-Examiner General against the prevailing fancy of knowledge without the reality of knowledge--drove him to court perpetual controversy with the