have a difficulty in explaining; but I am
sure that you will admit a proposition which I am about to make.

What is the proposition?

That since beauty is the opposite of ugliness, they are two?

Certainly.

And inasmuch as they are two, each of them is one?

True again.

And of just and unjust, good and evil, and of every other class, the
same remark holds: taken singly, each of them is one; but from the
various combinations of them with actions and things and with one
another, they are seen in all sorts of lights and appear many?

Very true.

And this is the distinction which I draw between the sight-loving,
art-loving, practical class and those of whom I am speaking, and who are
alone worthy of the name of philosophers.

How do you distinguish them? he said.

The lovers of sounds and sights, I replied, are, as I conceive, fond of
fine tones and colours and forms and all the artificial products that
are made out of them, but their mind is incapable of seeing or loving
absolute beauty.

True, he replied.

Few are they who are able to attain to the sight of this.

Very true.

And he who, having a sense of beautiful things has no sense of absolute
beauty, or who, if another lead him to a knowledge of that beauty is
unable to follow--of such an one I ask, Is he awake or in a dream
only? Reflect: is not the dreamer, sleeping or waking, one who likens
dissimilar things, who puts the copy in the place of the real object?

I should certainly say that such an one was dreaming.

But take the case of the other, who recognises the existence of absolute
beauty and is able to distinguish the idea from the objects which
participate in the idea, neither putting the objects in the place of the
idea nor the idea in the place of the objects--is he a dreamer, or is he
awake?

He is wide awake.

And may we not say that the mind of the one who knows has knowledge, and
that the mind of the other, who opines only, has opinion?

Certainly.

But suppose that the latter should quarrel with us and dispute our
statement, can we administer any soothing cordial or advice to him,
without revealing to him that there is sad disorder in his wits?

We must certainly offer him some good advice, he replied.

Come, then, and let us think of something to say to him. Shall we begin
by assuring him that he is welcome to any knowledge which he may have,
and that we are rejoiced at his having it? But we should like to ask him
a que