Eukleides and Terpsion of Megara were present at the conversation recorded in the _Phaedo_. There were, no doubt, more “friends of the ideas”[849] than we generally recognise. It is certain, in any case, that the use of the words εἴδη and ἰδέαι to express ultimate realities is pre-Platonic, and it seems most natural to regard it as of Pythagorean origin.[850] Footnote 847: Cf. especially the words ὃ θρυλοῦμεν ἀεί (76 d 8). The phrases αὐτὸ ὃ ἔστιν, αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτό, and the like are assumed to be familiar. “We” define reality by means of question and answer, in the course of which “we” give an account of its being (ἧς λόγον δίδομεν τοῦ εἶναι, 78 d 1, where λόγον ... τοῦ εἶναι is equivalent to λόγον τῆς οὐσίας). When we have done this, “we” set the seal or stamp of αὐτὸ ὃ ἔστιν upon it (75 d 2). Technical terminology implies a school. As Diels puts it (_Elementum_, p. 20), it is in a school that “the simile concentrates into a metaphor, and the metaphor condenses into a term.” Footnote 848: Xen. _Mem._ i. 2, 48. Footnote 849: Plato, _Soph._ 248 a 4. Footnote 850: See Diels, _Elementum_, pp. 16 sqq. Parmenides had already called the original Pythagorean “elements” μορφαί (§ 91), and Philistion called the “elements” of Empedokles ἰδέαι. If the ascription of this terminology to the Pythagoreans is correct, we may say that the Pythagorean “forms” developed into the atoms of Leukippos and Demokritos on the one hand (§ 174), and into the “ideas” of Plato on the other. We have really exceeded the limits of this work by tracing the history of Pythagoreanism down to a point where it becomes practically indistinguishable from the earliest form of Platonism; but it was necessary to do so in order to put the statements of our authorities in their true light. Aristoxenos is not likely to have been mistaken with regard to the opinions of the men he had known personally, and Aristotle’s statements must have had some foundation. We must assume, then, a later form of Pythagoreanism which was closely akin to early Platonism. That, however, is not the form of it which concerns us here, and we shall see in the next chapter that the fifth-century doctrine was of the more primitive type already described. CHAPTER VIII THE YOUNGER ELEATICS [Sidenote: Relation to predecessors.]