The knowledge, therefore, which is furnished by the Discursive Reason, Plato does not regard as "real Science." "It is something between Opinion on the one hand, and Intuition on the other."[546] [Footnote 546: Ibid., bk. vi. ch. xxi.] 4th. REASON (νοῦς)--_Intuitive Reason_, is the organ of self-evident, necessary, and universal Truth. In an immediate, direct, and intuitive manner, it takes hold on truth with absolute certainty. The reason, through the medium of _ideas_, holds communion with the world of real Being. These ideas are the _light_ which reveals the world of unseen realities, as the sun reveals the world of sensible forms. "_The idea of the good_ is the _sun_ of the Intelligible World; it sheds on objects the light of truth, and gives to the soul that knows, the power of knowing."[547] Under this light, the eye of reason apprehends the eternal world of being as truly, yes more truly, than the eye of sense apprehends the world of phenomena. This power the rational soul possesses by virtue of its having a nature kindred, or even homogeneous with the Divinity. It was "generated by the Divine Father," and, like him, it is in a certain sense "_eternal_."[548] Not that we are to understand Plato as teaching that the rational soul had an independent and underived existence; it was created or "generated" in eternity,[549] and even now, in its incorporate state, is not amenable to the conditions of time and space, but, in a peculiar sense, dwells in eternity; and therefore is capable of beholding eternal realities, and coming into communion with absolute beauty, and goodness, and truth--that is, with God, the _Absolute Being_. [Footnote 547: Ibid., bk. vi. ch. xix.; see also ch. xviii.] [Footnote 548: The reader must familiarize himself with the Platonic notion of _"eternity" as a fixed state out of time existing contemporaneous with one in time_, to appreciate the doctrine of Plato as stated above. If we regard his idea of eternity as merely an indefinite extension of time, with a past, a present, and a future, we can offer no rational interpretation of his doctrine of the eternal nature of the rational essence of the soul. An eternal nature "generated" in a "past" or "present" time is a contradiction. But that was not Plato's conception of "eternity," as the reader will discover on perusing the "Timæus" (ch. xiv.). "God resolved to create a moving image of eternity, and out of that eternity which reposes in its own _unchangeable unity_ he framed an eternal image moving according to numerical succession, which we call _Time_. Nothing can be more inaccurate than to apply the terms, _past, present, future_, to real Being, which is immovable. Past and future are expressions only suitable to generation which proceeds through time." Time reposes on the bosom of eternity, as all bodies are in space.] [Footnote 549: "Timæus," ch. xvi., and "Phædrus," where the soul is pronounced ἀρχὴ δὲ ἁγένητον.]