knowledge of the Idea of beauty itself, and from this to the knowledge of the world of Ideas in general. It passes in fact into philosophy. In this development there are two points which we cannot fail to note. In the first place, emotional love is explained as being simply the blind groping of reason towards the Idea. It is reason which has not yet recognized itself as such. It appears, therefore, in the {206} guise of feeling. Secondly, the later progress of the soul's love is simply the gradual recognition of itself by reason. When the soul perceives that the beauty in all objects is the same, that it is the common element amid the many, this is nothing but the process of inductive reasoning. And this development ends at last in the complete rational cognition of the world of Ideas, in a word, philosophy. Love is but an instinctive reason. The animal has no feeling of the beautiful, just because it has no reason. Love of the beautiful is founded upon the nature of man, not as a percipient or feeling being, but as a rational being. And it must end in the complete recognition of reason by itself, not in the feeling and intuition, but in the rational comprehension, of the Idea. One can imagine what Plato's answer would be to the sort of vulgarians and philistines who want to know what the use of philosophy is, and in what way it is "practical." To answer such a question is for Plato impossible, because the question itself is illegitimate. For a thing to have a use involves that it is a means towards an end. Fire has use, because it may be made a means towards the cooking of food. Money is useful, because it is a means to the acquisition of goods. That which is an end in itself, and not a means towards any further end, cannot possibly have any use. To suggest that philosophy ought to have use is, therefore, to put the cart before the horse, to invert the whole scale of values. It suggests that philosophy is a means towards some further end, instead of being the absolute end to which all other things are means. Philosophy is not _for_ anything. Everything else is _for_ it. And, if this seems an exaggerated or unpractical view, we may at least {207} remember that this is the view taken by the religious consciousness of man. Religion makes the supreme end of life the knowledge of, and communion with, God. God is for religion what the Idea is for philosophy. God is a figurative name for the Idea. To place the end of life in the knowledge of the Absolute, or the Idea, is therefore the teaching both of philosophy and religion. 4. Physics, or the Theory of Existence.