 Plato inherited from Socrates the conviction that knowledge of goodness has a salvific effect upon human life. That knowledge remained elusive to Socrates. As Plato continues the Socratic quest, he expands the scope of the search beyond ethical matters. In the Phaedo, as we saw earlier, the character Socrates expresses the conviction that goodness is the true cause (aitia) of the beneficent arrangement of the natural world, though the nature of goodness continues to elude him as well. The causal supremacy of goodness is recognized in the metaphysical and epistemological roles assigned to the Republic’s form of the Good, and it is the understanding of that form that constitutes the culmination of the education of the philosophical statesman, the paragon of the virtuous and happy person. What remains to be articulated is a conception of how cosmic goodness is manifested in the universe so that human beings will recognize it, understand it, and emulate it in order that their lives may become truly virtuous and  happy.[31]