copy. We can only reply, (1) that to the mind of Plato subject and object
were not yet distinguished; (2) that he supposes the process of creation to
take place in accordance with his own theory of ideas; and as we cannot
give a consistent account of the one, neither can we of the other. He
means (3) to say that the creation of the world is not a material process
of working with legs and arms, but ideal and intellectual; according to his
own fine expression, 'the thought of God made the God that was to be.' He
means (4) to draw an absolute distinction between the invisible or
unchangeable which is or is the place of mind or being, and the world of
sense or becoming which is visible and changing. He means (5) that the
idea of the world is prior to the world, just as the other ideas are prior
to sensible objects; and like them may be regarded as eternal and self-
existent, and also, like the IDEA of good, may be viewed apart from the
divine mind.

There are several other questions which we might ask and which can receive
no answer, or at least only an answer of the same kind as the preceding.
How can matter be conceived to exist without form? Or, how can the
essences or forms of things be distinguished from the eternal ideas, or
essence itself from the soul? Or, how could there have been motion in the
chaos when as yet time was not? Or, how did chaos come into existence, if
not by the will of the Creator? Or, how could there have been a time when
the world was not, if time was not? Or, how could the Creator have taken
portions of an indivisible same? Or, how could space or anything else have
been eternal when time is only created? Or, how could the surfaces of
geometrical figures have formed solids? We must reply again that we cannot
follow Plato in all his inconsistencies, but that the gaps of thought are
probably more apparent to us than to him. He would, perhaps, have said
that 'the first things are known only to God and to him of men whom God
loves.' How often have the gaps in Theology been concealed from the eye of