es, which can only be seen with the
eye of the mind?

That is true.

And of this kind I spoke as the intelligible, although in the search
after it the soul is compelled to use hypotheses; not ascending to
a first principle, because she is unable to rise above the region of
hypothesis, but employing the objects of which the shadows below are
resemblances in their turn as images, they having in relation to the
shadows and reflections of them a greater distinctness, and therefore a
higher value.

I understand, he said, that you are speaking of the province of geometry
and the sister arts.

And when I speak of the other division of the intelligible, you will
understand me to speak of that other sort of knowledge which reason
herself attains by the power of dialectic, using the hypotheses not as
first principles, but only as hypotheses--that is to say, as steps and
points of departure into a world which is above hypotheses, in order
that she may soar beyond them to the first principle of the whole; and
clinging to this and then to that which depends on this, by successive
steps she descends again without the aid of any sensible object, from
ideas, through ideas, and in ideas she ends.

I understand you, he replied; not perfectly, for you seem to me to
be describing a task which is really tremendous; but, at any rate, I
understand you to say that knowledge and being, which the science of
dialectic contemplates, are clearer than the notions of the arts, as
they are termed, which proceed from hypotheses only: these are also
contemplated by the understanding, and not by the senses: yet, because
they start from hypotheses and do not ascend to a principle, those who
contemplate them appear to you not to exercise the higher reason
upon them, although when a first principle is added to them they are
cognizable by the higher reason. And the habit which is concerned
with geometry and the cognate sciences I suppose that you would term
understanding and not reason, as being intermediate between opinion and
reason.

You have quite conceived my meaning, I said; and now, corresponding to
these four divisions, let there be four faculties in the soul--reason
answering to the highest, understanding to the second, faith (or
conviction) to the third, and perception of shadows to the last--and let
there be a scale of them, and let us suppose that the several faculties
have clearness in the same degree that their objects have truth.

I