he imitates a table. And so the man who makes the third copy of the original is an imitator."
15. I shall conclude the preliminaries and preparations for the closer study of the Platonic dialectic by reading you an extract from the lectures of the late Professor Butler of Dublin, in which he explains his conception of the Platonic theory of ideas. He explains ideas as the laws according to which God regulates the universe; a view not erroneous, but only rather vague, and conveying the impression that ideas do not enter into all our knowledge, but are the animating principle of our higher cognitions only.
"You can now enter easily into the aim of the theory of Ideas. That man's soul is made to contain not merely a consistent scheme of its own notions, but a direct apprehension of real and eternal laws beyond it, is not too absurd to be maintained. That these real and eternal laws are things intelligible, and not things sensible, is not very extravagant either. That these laws, impressed upon creation by its Creator, and apprehended by man, are something different equally from the Creator and from man, and that the whole mass of them may be fairly termed the world of things purely intelligible, is surely allowable. Nay, further, that there are qualities in the supreme and ultimate Cause of all, which are manifested in His creation, and not merely manifested, but, in a manner—after being brought out of His super-
