have a new term of endearment invented expressly for them, which is 'honey-
pale.' Lovers of wine and lovers of ambition also desire the objects of
their affection in every form. Now here comes the point:--The philosopher
too is a lover of knowledge in every form; he has an insatiable curiosity.
'But will curiosity make a philosopher? Are the lovers of sights and
sounds, who let out their ears to every chorus at the Dionysiac festivals,
to be called philosophers?' They are not true philosophers, but only an
imitation. 'Then how are we to describe the true?'

You would acknowledge the existence of abstract ideas, such as justice,
beauty, good, evil, which are severally one, yet in their various
combinations appear to be many. Those who recognize these realities are
philosophers; whereas the other class hear sounds and see colours, and
understand their use in the arts, but cannot attain to the true or waking
vision of absolute justice or beauty or truth; they have not the light of
knowledge, but of opinion, and what they see is a dream only. Perhaps he
of whom we say the last will be angry with us; can we pacify him without
revealing the disorder of his mind? Suppose we say that, if he has
knowledge we rejoice to hear it, but knowledge must be of something which
is, as ignorance is of something which is not; and there is a third thing,
which both is and is not, and is matter of opinion only. Opinion and
knowledge, then, having distinct objects, must also be distinct faculties.
And by faculties I mean powers unseen and distinguishable only by the
difference in their objects, as opinion and knowledge differ, since the one
is liable to err, but the other is unerring and is the mightiest of all our
faculties. If being is the object of knowledge, and not-being of
ignorance, and these are the extremes, opinion must lie between them, and
may be called darker than the one and brighter than the other. This
intermediate or contingent matter is and is not at the same time, and
partakes both of existence and of non-existence. Now I would ask my good