Text: George Washington Eveleth (as Augustus A. Levey), “To the Editor,” Round Table (New York, NY), vol. 6, no. 147, November 16, 1867, p. 329, cols. 1-2

[page 329, column 2:]

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ROUND TABLE:

SIR: In the last issue of The Round Table appears the following query:

“Has it ever been suggested that this universe of ours is only one of many, each with its own deity and laws?”

This was a favorite idea with the later followers of Plato, who were termed, in the histories of philosophy, the Neo-Platonists, and sometimes the Eclectics.

Its origin seems to have been from a misconception of Plato's meaning of the inherent constitution of παραδειγματα.

After these, Plato taught God modelled the four elements and the universe. Considering that beings possessed of mental powers were far preferable to those destitute of such faculties, God infused into the corporeal world a rational soul, which, as it could not be immediately combined with the body, he united to the active but irrational principle essentially inherent in matter. Having thus formed and animated the entire universe, the great Father of spirits (so Plato often terms God), again contemplating the ideal forms in his own mind, perceived there the simulacra or exemplars of three species of beings, which he realized in the mortal inhabitants of the earth, air, and water, the task of constructing which last he assigned to subordinate divinities; for had he himself framed them, they must have been immortal as their creator.

But the followers of Plato understood by these exemplars separated [column 3:] and independent existences governing different series of world systems, whose history consisted in the evolution of the ideas of which their particular divinities were the exponents in the great mind of the God of gods. This error, as it seems to me, has descended to our age, and writers have ascribed this theory to Plato; consult: Brücker, Histor. Philosph., p. 695 et seq; Gedike, Histor. Philosph. ex Cicero, collect, p. 183 et seq.; Monboddo, Origin of Language, Vol. I, c, ix.

The Alexandriau [[Alexandrian]] school of Christian philosophers discovered by a most astonishing effort of imagination the identity of Plat's soul of the world with the Holy Spirit; but as this irrational principle of motion ill corresponded with the third person of the Trinty, they fell back to what they called a hyper-cosmian soul of which no trace is found in any of Plato's works; see the Encyclopedia Française, article Eclectique; Brucker, Hist. Philosophie, Vol. I., p. 712 et seq.; and Meiner's Beytrag zur Geschicte der Denkart der ersten Jahrhunderte nach Christi Geburt in einigen Betrachtungen über die Neu-Platonische Philsophie.

Plato found that the great happiness of many was to be found in silent thought on the world-Creator and in the entire rapture which this would afford, which is singularly alike to the belief of the Hindoos in Vishun's life of a cycle (sometimes translated a thousand years) engaged in mute rhapsody on the nature of things. The Bagota Gita is full of curious likeness to the philosophy of Plato, and essentially so to that of Pythagoras and Thales.

Coming down in history to the great pantheist of modern times, we find in Spinoza many traces of believe in a plurality of universes and of their master-minds, but we shall nowhere find such remarkable theories as in the Eureka of Edgar Allan Poe, in which the following phrase occurs: “Each universe resting on the bosom of its particular god.”

He reasons that, as we proceed into space, we find vast vacant places where there is utter vacancy — no stars, nor even traces of them — but going further we come to regular systems with central suns and worlds in revolution round them. Poe argues that one system can have no influence over another at such enormous distances and that their whole economy may be diverse; he hints that they may each be animated by great truth, and that stars may be representatives of ideas, speaking poetically of Venus, the azure-colored, as where “Men hear not for the beating of their hearts;” where there is perfect bliss, for there is entire oblivion.

I ask your pardon for so much intrusion, and would further refer “R. W. E.” to the writings of Procius, Plotinus, Porphyry, Malchus, Iamblicus of Miletus, and in our modern time Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, and E. A. Poe for further discussion of the subject.

The best works on Plato and his philosophy are Taylor's and Grote's lives, and on his school the German scholar may consult Prof. Meiner's Geschichte des Ursprungs, Fortgangs und Verfalls der Wissenschaftgen in Greichenland, Göttingen, 1788.

Your obedient servant, AUGUSTUS A. LEVEY.

209 EAST THIRTY-EIGHTH STREET, New York, Oct. 5, 1867.