And some lines afterwards: "Thus the nature of the immense animal which we call _the world,_ is eternal." Plato, following the example of his predecessors, then introduces the Supreme Being, the Creator of the world, forming this world before time; so that God could not exist without the world, nor the world without God; as the sun cannot exist without shedding light into space, nor this light steal into space without the sun. I pass in silence many Greek, or rather Oriental ideas; as for example--that there are four sorts of animals--celestial gods, birds of the air, fishes, and terrestrial animals, to which last we have the honor to belong. I hasten to arrive at a second trinity: "the being engendered, the being who engenders, and the being which resembles the engendered and the engenderer." This trinity is formal enough, and the fathers have found their account in it. This trinity is followed by a rather singular theory of the four elements. The earth is founded on an equilateral triangle, water on a right-angled triangle, air on a scalene, and fire on an isosceles triangle. After which he demonstratively proves that there can be but five worlds, because there are but five regular solid bodies, and yet that there is but one world which is round. I confess that no philosopher in Bedlam has ever reasoned so powerfully. Rouse yourself, friend reader, to hear me speak of the other famous trinity of Plato, which his commentators have so much vaunted: it is the Eternal Being, the Eternal Creator of the world; His word, intelligence, or idea; and the good which results from it. I assure you that I have sought for it diligently in this "Timæus," and I have never found it there; it may be there "_totidem literis,_" but it is not "_totidem verbis,_" or I am much mistaken. After reading all Plato with great reluctance, I perceived some shadow of the trinity for which he is so much honored. It is in the sixth book of his "Chimerical Republic," in which he says: "Let us speak of the Son, the wonderful production of good, and His perfect image." But unfortunately he discovers this perfect image of God to be the sun. It was therefore the physical sun, which with the Word and the Father composed the platonic trinity. In the "Epinomis" of Plato there are very curious absurdities, one of which I translate as reasonably as I can, for the convenience of the reader: