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FORE:That Philo��s interpretation of Platonism ultimately reacted on Greek thought seems certain, but at what date his influence began to tell, and how far it reached, must remain undecided. Plutarch speaks of God��s purity and of his transcendent elevation above the universe in language closely resembling that of the Alexandrian Jew, with whose opinions he may have been indirectly acquainted.400 We have already seen how the daemons were employed to fill up the interval thus created, and what serious concessions to popular superstition the belief in their activity involved. Still Plutarch259 does not go so far as to say that the world was not created by God. This step was taken by Numenius, a philosopher who flourished about the middle of the second century, and who represents the complete identification of Platonism with Pythagoreanism, already mentioned as characteristic of the period following that date. Numenius is acquainted with Philo��s speculations, and accepts his derivation of Platonism from the Pentateuch. ��What,�� he asks, ��is Plato but a Moses writing in the Attic dialect?��401 He also accepts the theory that the world was created by a single intermediate agent, whom, however, he credits with a much more distinct and independent personality than Philo could see his way to admitting. And he regards the human soul as a fallen spirit whose life on earth is the consequence of its own sinful desires. From such fancies there was but a single step to the more thorough-going dualism which looks on the material world as entirely evil, and as the creation of a blind or malevolent power. This step had already been taken by Gnosticism. The system so called summed up in itself, more completely, perhaps, than any other, all the convergent or conflicting ideas of the age. Greek mythology and Greek philosophy, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity each contributed an element to the fantastic and complicated scheme propounded by its last great representative, Valentinus. This teacher pitches his conception of the supreme God even higher than Philo, and places him, like Plato��s absolute Good, outside the sphere of being. From him��or it��as from a bottomless gulf proceed a vast series of emanations ending in the Demiurgus or creator of the visible world, whose action is described, in language vividly recalling the speculations of certain modern metaphysicians, as an enormous blunder. For, according to Gnosticism, the world is not merely infected with evil by participation in a material principle, it is evil altogether, and a special intervention of260 the higher powers is needed in order to undo the work of its delirious author.402 Here we have a particular side of Plato��s philosophy exaggerated and distorted by contact with Zoroastrian dualism. In the Statesman there is a mythical description of two alternate cycles, in one of which the world is governed by a wise providence, while in the other things are abandoned to themselves, and move in a direction the reverse of that originally imposed on them. It is in the latter cycle that Plato supposes us to be moving at present.403 Again, after having been long content to explain the origin of evil by the resistance of inert matter to the informing power of ideal goodness, Plato goes a step further in his latest work, the Laws, and hazards the hypothesis of an evil soul actively counterworking the beneficent designs of God.404 And we find the same idea subsequently taken up by Plutarch, who sees in it the most efficient means for exonerating God from all share in the responsibility for physical disorder and moral wrong.405 But both master and disciple restricted the influence of their supposed evil soul within very narrow limits, and they would have repudiated with horror such a notion as that the whole visible world is a product of folly or of sin.Two facts are made clear by Mr. Mokveld's book, if, indeed, the world has ever doubted them. The first is that the German authorities, believing their victory to be beyond question, deliberately sanctioned a campaign of frightfulness. They did not imagine that they would ever be held to account. They wished to terrorise their opponents by showing them what resistance involved. The atrocities were not the blunders of drink-sodden reservists, but the result of the theories of half-witted military pedants. The second is that the invading armies were as nervous as a hysterical woman. Those would-be conquerors of the world were frightened by their own shadows. A shot fired by accident from a German rifle led to tales of attacks by Belgian francs-tireurs and then to indiscriminate murder by way of revenge. Mr. Mokveld examined the legends of treacherous Belgian assaults and the 7 mutilation of the German wounded, and found them in every case wholly baseless. No German had ever seen these things happen, but had only heard of them. When definite details were given, Mr. Mokveld tracked them down and found them false. The Belgian atrocities lacked even that slender justification which belongs to reprisals. They were the work of a drunken and "rattled" soldiery��for fear is apt to make men brutal��deliberately encouraged by the authorities, who for this purpose relaxed the bonds of military discipline. When the battle of the Marne changed the complexion of affairs, these authorities grew scared and repudiated the policy, but Belgium remains a witness of what Germany's triumph means for her victims.

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