ind. We may gather from what is there
said that the ideas cannot be identified with any embodiment of them,
however perfect, since an idea means a nature common to all its possible
embodiments and remains always outside of them. This is what Plato meant
by saying that the ideas lay apart from phenomena and were what they
were in and for themselves. They were mere forms and not, as a
materialised Platonism afterward fancied, images in the mind of some
psychological deity. The gods doubtless know the ideas, as Plato tells
us in the same place: these are the common object of their thought and
of ours; hence they are not anybody's thinking process, which of course
would be in flux and phenomenal. Only by being ideal (_i.e._, by being a
goal of intellectual energy and no part of sensuous existence) can a
term be common to various minds and serve to make their deliverances
pertinent to one another.

That truth is no existence might also be proved as follows: Suppose that
nothing existed or (if critics carp at that phrase), that a universe did
not exist. It would then be true that all existences were wanting, yet
this truth itself would endure; therefore truth is not an existence. An
attempt might be made to reverse this argument by saying that since it
would still "be" true that nothing existed, the supposition is
self-contradictory, for the truth would "be" or exist in any case. Truth
would thus be turned into an opinion, supposed to subsist eternally in
the ether. The argument, however, is a bad sophism, because it falsifies
the intent of the terms used. Somebody's opinion is not what is meant by
the truth, since every opinion, however long-lived, may be false.
Furthermore, the notion that it might have been true that nothing
existed is a perfectly clear notion. The nature of dialectic is entirely
corrupted when sincerity is lost. No intent can be self-contradictory,
since it fixes its own object, but a man may easily contradict himself
by wavering between one intent and another.]

CHAPTER II

HISTORY

[Sidenote: History an artificial memory.]

The least artificial extension of common knowledge is history. Personal
recollection supplies many an anecdote, anecdotes collected and freely
commented upon make up memoirs, and memoirs happily combined make not
the least interesting sort of history. When a man recalls any episode in
his career, describes the men that flourished in his youth, or laments
the changes tha