Note (return) — Chapter X

And now we are prepared to form a clear conception of the Platonic doctrine of Ideas. Viewed in their relation to the Eternal Reason, as giving the primordial thought and law of all being, these principles are simply εἴδη αὐτὰ καθ᾽ αὑτά--ideas in themselves--the essential qualities or attributes of Him who is the supreme and ultimate Cause of all existence. When regarded as before the Divine imagination, giving definite forms and relations, they are the τύποι, the παραδείγµατα--the types, models, patterns, ideals according to which the universe was fashioned. Contemplated in their actual embodiment in the laws, and typical forms of the material world, they are εἰκόνες--images of the eternal perfections of God. The world of sense pictures the world of reason by a participation (µέθεξις) of the ideas. And viewed as interwoven in the very texture and framework of the soul, they are ὁµοιώµατα--copies of the Divine Ideas which are the primordial laws of knowing, thinking, and reasoning. Ideas are thus the nexus of relation between God and the visible universe, and between the human and the Divine reason. 516 There is something divine in the world, and in the human soul, namely, the eternal laws and reasons of things, mingled with the endless diversity and change of sensible phenomena. These ideas are "the light of the intelligible world;" they render the invisible world of real Being perceptible to the reason of man. "Light is the offspring of the Good, which the Good has produced in his own likeness. Light in the visible world is what the idea of the Good is in the intelligible world. And this offspring of the Good--light--has the same relation to vision and visible things which the Good has to intellect and intelligible things." 517