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| Chapter XXIX.—Origin of Plato’s doctrine of form.
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Chapter XXIX.—Origin of Plato’s
doctrine of form.
And Plato, too, when he says that form
is the third original principle next to God and matter, has manifestly
received this suggestion from no other source than from Moses, having
learned, indeed, from the words of Moses the name of form, but not having
at the same time been instructed by the initiated, that without mystic
insight it is impossible to have any distinct knowledge of the writings
of Moses. For Moses wrote that God had spoken to him regarding the
tabernacle in the following words: “And thou shalt make for me
according to all that I show thee in the mount, the pattern of the
tabernacle.”2574
And again: “And thou
shalt erect the tabernacle
according to the pattern of all
the instruments thereof, even so shalt thou make it.”2575
And again, a little afterwards: “Thus
then thou shalt make it according to the pattern which was showed to thee
in the mount.”2576
Plato, then, reading these
passages, and not receiving what was written with the suitable insight,
thought that form had some kind of separate existence before that which
the senses perceive, and he often calls it the pattern of the things
which are made, since the writing of Moses spoke thus of the tabernacle:
“According to the form showed to thee in the mount, so shalt thou
make it.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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