l exemplars of all organic and inorganic forms. An
illustration may remove some of the obscurity of these views. Thus all
men, though they may present different appearances when compared with
each other, are obviously fashioned upon the same model, to which they
all more or less perfectly conform. All trees of the same kind, though
they may differ from one another, are, in like manner, fashioned upon a
common model, to which they more or less perfectly conform. To such
models, exemplars, or types, Plato gave the designation of Ideas. Our
knowledge thereof is clearly not obtained from the senses, but from
reflection. Now Plato asserted that these ideas are not only conceptions
of the mind, but actually perceptions or entities having a real
existence; nay, more, that they are the only real existences. Objects
are thus only material embodiments of ideas, and in representation are
not exact; for correspondence between an object and its model is only so
far as circumstances will permit. Hence we can never determine all the
properties or functions of the idea from an examination of its imperfect
material representation, any more than we can discover the character or
qualities of a man from pictures of him, no matter how excellent those
pictures may be.

[Sidenote: Doctrine of Reminiscence.]

[Sidenote: Recollections during transmigration.]

The Ideal theory of Plato, therefore, teaches that, beyond this world of
delusive appearances, this world of material objects, there is another
world, invisible, eternal, and essentially true; that, though we cannot
trust our senses for the correctness of the indications they yield,
there are other impressions upon which we may fall back to aid us in
coming to the truth, the reminiscences or recollections still abiding in
the soul of the things it formerly knew, either in the realm of pure
ideas, or in the states of former life through which it has passed. For
Plato says that there are souls which, in periods of many thousand
years, have successively transmigrated through bodies of various kinds.
Of these various conditions they retain a recollection, more faintly or
vividly, as the case may be. Ideas seeming to be implanted in the human
mind, but certainly never communicated to us by the senses, are derived
from those former states. If this recollection of ancient events and
conditions were absolutely precise and correct, then man would have an
innate means for determining the truth. Bu