he himself says, partaking of his own uncertainty about the things of which
he is speaking.

We may remark in passing, that the Platonic compared with the Jewish
description of the process of creation has less of freedom or spontaneity.
The Creator in Plato is still subject to a remnant of necessity which he
cannot wholly overcome. When his work is accomplished he remains in his
own nature. Plato is more sensible than the Hebrew prophet of the
existence of evil, which he seeks to put as far as possible out of the way
of God. And he can only suppose this to be accomplished by God retiring
into himself and committing the lesser works of creation to inferior
powers. (Compare, however, Laws for another solution of the difficulty.)

Nor can we attach any intelligible meaning to his words when he speaks of
the visible being in the image of the invisible. For how can that which is
divided be like that which is undivided? Or that which is changing be the
copy of that which is unchanging? All the old difficulties about the ideas
come back upon us in an altered form. We can imagine two worlds, one of
which is the mere double of the other, or one of which is an imperfect copy
of the other, or one of which is the vanishing ideal of the other; but we
cannot imagine an intellectual world which has no qualities--'a thing in
itself'--a point which has no parts or magnitude, which is nowhere, and
nothing. This cannot be the archetype according to which God made the
world, and is in reality, whether in Plato or in Kant, a mere negative
residuum of human thought.

There is another aspect of the same difficulty which appears to have no
satisfactory solution. In what relation does the archetype stand to the
Creator himself? For the idea or pattern of the world is not the thought
of God, but a separate, self-existent nature, of which creation is the