any limits to the qualities he assigns, the word infinite, therefore, is
the abstract, the vague term which he uses to characterize them. He says
that his power is infinite, which signifies that when he beholds those
stupendous effects which nature produces, he has no conception at what
point his power can rest; that his goodness, his wisdom, his knowledge
are infinite: this announces that he is ignorant how far these
perfections ma be carried in a being whose power so much surpasses his
own; that he is of infinite duration, because he is not capable of
conceiving he could have had a beginning or can ever cease to be;
because of this he considers a defect in those transitory beings of whom
he beholds the dissolution, whom he sees are subjected to death. He
presumes the cause of those effects to which he is a witness, of those
striking phenomena that assail his sight, is immutable, permanent, not
subjected to change, like all the evanescent beings whom he knows are
submitted to dissolution, to destruction, to change of form. This mover
of nature being always invisible to man, his mode of action being,
impenetrable, he believes that, like his soul or the concealed principle
which animates his own body, which he calls spiritual, a spirit, is the
moving power of the universe; in consequence he makes a spirit the soul,
the life, the principle of motion in nature. Thus when by dint of
subtilizing, he has arrived at believing the principle by which his body
is moved is a spiritual, immaterial substance, he makes the spirit of
the universe immaterial in like manner: he makes it immense, although
without extent; immoveable, although capable of moving nature:
immutable, although he supposes him to be the author of all the changes,
operated in the universe.

The idea of the unity of God, which cost Socrates his life, because the
Athenians considered those Atheists who believed but in one, was the
tardy fruit of human meditation. Plato himself did not dare to break