_Being_?" Have we a faculty of universal, necessary, and eternal
principles? Have we a faculty, an interior eye which beholds "_the
intelligible_," ideal, spiritual world, as the eye of sense beholds the
visible or "_sensible world_?"[521]

Plato commences this inquiry by first defining his understanding of the
word dynamis--_power_ or _faculty_. "We will say _faculties_ (dynameis)
are a certain kind of real existences by which we can do whatever we are
able (_e.g._, to know), as there are powers by which every thing does
what it does: the eye has a _power_ of seeing; the ear has a _power_ of
hearing. But these powers (of which I now speak) have no color or figure
to which I can so refer that I can distinguish one power from another.
_In order to make such distinction, I must look at the power itself, and
see what it is, and what it does. In that way I discern the power of
each thing, and that is the same power which produces the same effect,
and that is a different power which produces a different effect_."[522]
That which is employed about, and accomplishes one and the same purpose,
this Plato calls a _faculty_.

[Footnote 521: "Republic," bk. vi. ch. xviii.]

[Footnote 522: Ibid., bk. v. ch. xxi.]

We have seen that our first conceptions (_i.e._, first in the order of
time) are of the mingled, the concrete (to synkechymenon), "the
multiplicity of things to which the multitude ascribe beauty, etc.[523]
The mind "contemplates what is great and small, not as distinct from
each other, but as confused.[524] Prior to the discipline of
_reflection_, men are curious about mere sights and sounds, love
beautiful voices, beautiful colors, beautiful forms, but their
intelligence can not see, can not embrace, the essential nature of the
Beautiful itself.[525] Man's condition previous to the education of
philosophy is vividly presented in Plato's simile of the cave.[526] He
beholds only the images and shadows of the ectypal world, which are but
dim and distant adumbrations of the real and archetypal world.

Primarily nothing is given in the abstract (to kegorismenon), but every
thing in the concrete. The primary faculties of the mind enter into
action spontaneously and simultaneously; all our primary notions are
consequently synthetic. When reflection is applied to this primary
totality of consciousness, that is, when we analyze our notions, we find
them composed of diverse and opposite elements, some of which are
variable,