Stolen Legacy

Page 180



Page 180

Mystery System. Read the doctrines of Parmenides who in the problem of existence distinguishes between Being and non-Being; also of Heracleitus in the problem of flux and change through the process of transmutation; also of Socrates in the proof of immortality, and Plato in his supposed Theory of Ideas, in which he distinguished between (a) the real and unreal (b) the idea of a thing and the thing itself (c) the noumena and phenomena. In all these instances the principle of opposites has been used as a method of interpretation. This method is Egyptian not Platonic.

(4) The Republic of Plato: The Ideal State

Plato's authorship of the Republic is disputed for the following reasons:--

(a) The attributes of an Ideal State are expressed in the allegory of the charioteer and winged steeds which is dramatized in the Judgment Drama of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and therefore proves its Egyptian origin.

(b) The chariot was neither a culture pattern nor war machine of the Greeks at the time of Plato. The wars of the Greeks with the Persians and the Peloponnesian wars were all maritime.

(c) At this time the Egyptians were specialists in the manufacture of chariots and horse breeding Gen., c. 45, v. 27; c. 47, v. 17; Deut., c. 17, v. 16; I Kings, c. 10, v. 28.

(d) The historians Diogenes Laertius, Aristoxenus and Favorinus have declared that the subject matter of the Republic was found in the controversies written by Protagoris (481-411) when Plato was but a boy. Read Diogenes Laertius, p. 311 and 327; also The Egyptian Book of the Dead, c. 17; also Republic III 415; V 478; and VI 490 sqq.

(5) The Timaeus of Plato

Plato's authorship of the Timaeus is also disputed for the following reasons:--

(a) The historian Diogenes Laertius in Bk. VIII, p. 399-401 has declared that when Plato visited Dionysius in Sicily, he paid Philolaus a Pythagorean forty Alexandrian Minae of silver for a book, from which he copied the whole contents of the Timaeus.

(b) The subject matter of the Timaeus is eclectic. Read the Timaeus.

(6) Magic is the Key to the interpretation of ancient religion and natural philosophy

Through the application of the principle: that the qualities of entities, human or divine, are distributed throughout their various parts; and that contact with such entities releases those qualities, many religious phenomena and those of primitive science could be interpreted and understood.