101S113_AA07L01.pptVIP

Well then, shall we begin the enquiry in our usual manner: Whenever a number of individuals have a common name, we assume them to have also a corresponding idea or form. Do you understand me? I do. Let us take any common instance; there are beds and tables in the world --plenty of them, are there not? * Yes. But there are only two ideas or forms of them --one the idea of a bed, the other of a table. True. And the maker of either of them makes a bed or he makes a table for our use, in accordance with the idea --that is our way of speaking in this and similar instances --but no artificer makes the ideas themselves: how could he? * Wait a little, and there will be more reason for your saying so. For this is Homer who is able to make not only vessels of every kind, but plants and animals, himself and all other things --the earth and heaven, and the things which are in heaven or under the earth; he makes the gods also. * What way? An easy way enough; or rather, there are many ways in which the feat might be quickly and easily accomplished, none quicker than that of turning a mirror round and round --you would soon enough make the sun and the heavens, and the earth and yourself, and other animals and plants, and all the, other things of which we were just now speaking, in the mirror. * Yes, he said; but they would be appearances only. Very good, I said, you are coming to the point now. And the painter too is, as I conceive, just such another --a creator of appearances, is he not? * Of course. But then I suppose you will say that what he creates is untrue. And yet there is a sense in which the painter also creates a bed? Yes, he said, but not a real bed. And what of the maker of the bed? Were you not saying that he too makes, not the idea which, according to our view, is the essence of the bed, but only a particular bed? * Yes, I did. Then if he does not make that which exists he cannot make true existence, but only some semblance of existence; and if an