Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/383

328 similitude of the Cave, in which this conversion is allegorised. I then read to you an extract from Plato, the purport of which was to show that, just as an existing sensible object has a higher degree of reality than a mere painting of it, so the divine and eternal idea of that object has a higher degree of reality than the object itself, and that, just as we may very well consider the painting unreal when compared with the object, so we may very properly regard the object as unreal when compared with its eternal idea. And, finally, my object in reading to you a few extracts from Professor Butler was to make you acquainted with the, somewhat vague and unsatisfactory interpretation of the Platonic ideas which is generally current.

17. Having disposed of these introductory matters, I now enter on the dialectic of Plato. And as this science is the science of ideas, we have first of all to consider what ideas are in themselves. We must try to fathom their nature as much by our own reflections as by means of the light which Plato has contributed to the research. It is not so much by reading Plato as by studying our own minds that we can find out what ideas are, and perceive the significance of the theory which expounds them. It is, as I formerly said, only by verifying in our own consciousness the discoveries of antecedent philosophers that we can hope rightly to understand their doctrines or appreciate the value and importance of their