Note (return) — Chapter X

These primitive intuitions--the simple perceptions of sense, and the à priori intuitions of the reason, which constitute the elements of all our complex notions, have essentially diverse objects--the sensible or ectypal world, seen by the eye and touched by the hand, which Plato calls δοξαστήν--the subject of opinion; and the noetic or archetypal world, perceived by reason, and which he calls διανοητικήν--the subject of rational intuition or science. "It is plain," therefore, argues Plato, "that opinion is a different thing from science. They must, therefore, have a different faculty in reference to a different object--science as regards that which is, so as to know the nature of real being--opinion as regards that which can not be said absolutely to be, or not to be. That which is known and that which is opined can not possibly be the same,... since they are naturally faculties of different things, and both of them are faculties--opinion and science, and each of them different from the other." 529 Here then are two grand divisions of the mental powers--a faculty of apprehending universal and necessary Truth, of intuitively beholding absolute Reality, and a faculty of perceiving sensible objects, and of judging according to appearance.