Note (return) — Chapter IV
Reading edition
4. And, finally, the host of inferior deities interposed between the material sensible world and God seemed to Plato as needful in order to explain the apparent defects and disorders of sublunary affairs. Plato was jealous of the Divine honor. "All good must be ascribed to God, and nothing but good. We must find evil, disorder, suffering, in some other cause." 199 He therefore commits to the junior deities the task of creating animals, and of forming "the mortal part of man," because the mortal part is "possessed of certain dire and necessary passions." 200