In the visible segment, indeed, one part will contain images. But I call images, in the first place, shadows; afterwards, the resemblances of things appearing in water, and in dense, smooth, and lucid bodies, and every thing of this kind, if you apprehend me?--Glauco. I apprehend you.--Socrates. Now conceive that the other section comprehends the things, of which these images are nothing more than similitudes, such as the animals around us, together with plants, and whatever is the work of nature and art.--Glauco. I conceive it.--Socrates. Do you consider this section then, as divided into true and false? And that the hypothesis of opinion is to the knowledge of science, as a resemblance to its original?--Glauco. I do, very readily.--Socrates. Now then, consider how the section of the intelligible is to be divided.--Glauco. How?--Socrates. Thus: one segment is that which the soul enquires after, using the former divisions as images, and compelled to proceed from hypotheses, not to the principle, but to the conclusion. The other is that which employs the cogitative power of the soul, as she proceeds from an hypothesis to a principle no longer supposed, and, neglecting images, advances through their _obscurity_ into _the light of_ ideas themselves.--Glauco. I do not, in this, sufficiently understand you.--Socrates. But again, for you will more easily understand me from what has been already premised. I think you are not ignorant, that those who are conversant in geometry, arithmetic, and the like, suppose even and odd, together with various figures, and the three species of angles, and other things similar to these, according to each method of proceeding. Now, having established these, as hypotheses sufficiently known, they conceive that no reason is to be required for their position: but beginning from these, they descend through the rest, and arrive at last, at the object of their investigation.--Glauco. This I know perfectly well.--Socrates. This also you know, that they use visible forms, and make them the subject of their discourse, at the same time not directing their intellect to the perception of these, but to the _originals_ they resemble; I mean the square itself, and the diameter itself; and not to the figures they delineate. And thus, other forms, which are represented by shadows and images in water, are employed by them, merely as resemblances, while they strive to behold that which can be seen by cogitation alone.--Glauco. You speak the truth.--Socrates. This is what I called above a species of the intelligible, in the investigation of which, the soul was compelled to use hypotheses; not ascending to the principle, as incapable of rising above hypotheses, but using the images formed from inferior objects, to a similitude of such as are superior, and which are so conceived and distinguished by opinion, as if they perspicuously contributed to the knowledge of things themselves.--Glauco. I understand indeed, that