Book 3
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Again, Alcimus makes this further statement: There are some things, say the wise, which the soul perceives through the body, as in seeing and hearing; there are other things which it discerns by itself without the aid of the body. Hence it follows that of existing things some are objects of sense and others objects of thought. Hence Plato said that, if we wish to take in at one glance the principles underlying the universe, we must first distinguish the ideas by themselves, for example, likeness, unity and plurality, magnitude, rest and motion; next we must assume the existence of
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beauty, goodness, justice and the like, each existing in and for itself; in the third place we must see how many of the ideas are relative to other ideas, as are knowledge, or magnitude, or ownership, remembering that the things within our experience bear the same names as those ideas because they partake of them; I mean that things which partake of justice are just, things which partake of beauty are beautiful. Each one of the ideas is eternal, it is a notion, and moreover is incapable of change. Hence Plato says that they stand in nature like archetypes, and that all things else bear a resemblance to the ideas because they are copies of these archetypes. Now here are the words of Epicharmus about the good and about the ideas:
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A. Is flute-playing a thing? B. Most certainly. A. Is man then flute-playing? B. By no means. A. Come, let me see, what is a flute-player? Whom do you take him to be? Is he not a man? B. Most certainly. A. Well, don’t you think the same would be the case with the good? Is not the good in itself a thing? And does not he who has learnt that thing and knows it at once become good? For, just as he becomes a flute-player by learning flute-playing, or a dancer when he has learnt dancing, or a plaiter when he has learnt plaiting, in the same way, if he has learnt anything of the sort, whatever you like, he would not be one with the craft but he would be the craftsman.
