Page:Plato (IA platocollins00colliala).pdf/35

 an artist adds fresh touches to a favourite picture. He admits, with Heraclitus, that all objects of sense are fleeting and changeable; and he admits with the Eleaties that Being alone can really be said to exist; but he blends these two theories together. Everything that we can name or see has its eternal Idea or prototype; and this particular flower, with its sensible bloom and fragrance, is merely the transitory image or expression of the universal Flower that never fades. And thus, far removed from this material world of birth and death, change and decay, Plato conceived another world of pure and perfect forms, imperceptible by Earthly senses and perceived by the eye of reason alone, each form in itself separate, unchangeable, and everlasting, and each answering to some visible object to which it impacts a share of its own divine essence, as the sun gives light to nature.

But (objects Parmenides in this Dialogue), how can you bridge over the gulf which separates the sensible from the Ideal world? How do these earthly imitations of the Ideas partake of the essence of their divine prototypes? And how far can you carry your theory? Have the meanest as well as the noblest objects—hair and mud, for instance, as well as beauty and truth—their ideal Forms? Again, there may be Ideas of Ideas, and so you may go on generalising to infinity. Lastly, they cannot be only conceptions of the mind; while, if they are types in nature and have a real existence, we cannot know them; for all human knowledge is relative, and to comprehend these eternal and absolute Ideas, we should require an Ideal and