Note 13 — Chapter II

The primitive gods of Plato's conception (in the "Timæus") are not to be confounded with the gods of the poetic and popular faith. As Mr. Grote has pointed out, there is nothing more remarkable in Plato's writings than the subtilty and skill with which he contrived to elude the charge of impiety and infidelity toward the gods of tradition and of the popular faith. In a passage of the "Timæus," on which Mr. Grote seems to be in doubt whether it was ironical or sincere, Plato boldly confronts the difficulty by saying that we must believe competent witnesses whose testimony we have, respecting the genesis of the remaining gods who have personal names and were believed in by his contemporaries. For his own part, he says, he does not pretend to account for their generation. The sons of the gods, the heroic and sacred families, who must have known their own fathers and all about their own family affairs, have given us their family traditions, and we must obey the law and believe. But concerning the primitive gods, the first progenitors of the remaining gods, we are at liberty to speculate. The ingenuity of this admission of authority where authority has spoken, reconcilable with speculation upon matters on which authority has not spoken, is admirable. Plato, as Mr. Grote has observed, was willing to incur the risk of one count of the indictment which was brought against his master Socrates, that of introducing new divine persons. In legal parlance he might have demurred to this count, as not charging any offense against the established religion. But the other count, for not acknowledging the gods whom the city acknowledged, he did not choose to encounter. As to them, he prudently, and perhaps sarcastically, accepts the testimony of witnesses who speak by inspiration and authority. But as to the primitive gods, the progenitors of the gods from whom were descended the heroic and sacred families of men, he expresses in the "Timæus" his own convictions, without appealing to authority and without intimating that he is speaking of mysteries beyond the comprehension of his reason. The boldness of this flight beyond all authority into the realms of pure reason is very striking, even if it does end in nothing but probability, which is all that Plato claims for his theory.