No one will deny that there is a great analogy between the Platonic philosophy and certain metaphysical and cosmological principles taught in the Zohar and in the Book of Formation. On both sides we see the Divine Intelligence or the Word shaping the universe according to types contained within Himself before things were brought forth. On both sides we see numbers play the role of intermediaries between ideas, between the supreme idea and the objects which are the incomplete manifestation in the world of this idea. On both sides, finally, we find the dogmas of the pre-existence of the souls, of reminiscence and of metempsychosis. These various resemblances are so striking that the Kabbalists themselves -- I refer to the modern Kabbalists -- recognized them, and in order to explain them, they thought it best to make Plato a disciple of Jeremiah, just as others made Aristotle a disciple of Simon the Just.
The Kabbalah, Franck and Sossnitz
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