xperience were composed solely of sensations, each
individual would be an isolated solipsistic unit--incapable of rational
Discourse or communication with his fellow-men. To cure this defect,
Plato offered the ideas--universal forms common to the intelligence of
every rational being. Not only would they render possible a common
Knowledge of Reality--the existence of such ideas would necessarily also
give permanence, fixity, law, and order to our intellectual activity.
Our Knowledge would not be a mere random succession of impressions, but
a definitely determined organic unity.

In all this argument it must be remembered Plato never said or suggested
that the intellect of man--thus equipped with ideal forms--was thereby
enabled to become, or did become, the creator of the world by and in
which each one believes himself to be surrounded and included. He always
distinguished between Idea and Reality, between Thought and Thing. The
ideas were types of the forms immanent in things themselves. It has been
said by some scholars that he generally distinguished between the two by
the employment of distinct terms, applying +eidos+ to the mental
conception and +idea+ to the substantial form. This verbal distinction
was accepted by many scholars of the epoch of Liddell and Scott and
Davies and Vaughan. A reference to this distinction in the present
writer's essay on _The Dynamic Foundation of Knowledge_ provoked at the
instance of one critic the allegation that it is not borne out by a
critical study of the Platonic texts. That is a matter of little moment
and one upon which the writer cannot claim to pronounce. The important
point is that in one way or another Plato undoubtedly distinguished
between and indeed contrasted the idea and the substantial form. No
trace of the solipsism which results from their being confounded and
which has ultimately brought to destruction the imposing edifice of
Hegelian Thought is to be found in his writings.

* * * * *

The Platonic doctrine of ideas speedily found an energetic critic in
Aristotle. In Aristotle's view, it was quite unnecessary and
unwarrantable to postulate the existence in the Mind of ideal forms or
counterparts of the substantial forms of Reality. This, according to
him, was a wholly unnecessary reduplication. He was content to believe
that the mind found and recognised the essential forms of things when
they were presented to it in perceptive Exp