One way in which this theory was applied is found in the manner in which these poets speak of the beauty of their beloved. Plato has stated that wisdom is the most lovely of all ideas, and that, were there a visible image of her, she would be transporting. (“Phædrus,” 250.) Sidney seizes upon this suggestion, and by identifying his Stella with wisdom he can frame a sonnet ending in a couplet that shall have the required epigrammatic point. He writes: “The wisest scholler of the wight most wise, By _Phœbus_ doome, with sugred sentence sayes: That vertue if it once meete with our eyes, Strange flames of love it in our soules would rayse. But for that man with paine this truth discries, While he each thing in sences ballances wayes, And so, nor will nor can behold these skyes, Which inward Sunne to heroicke mindes displaies. Vertue of late with vertuous care to stir Love of himselfe, takes _Stellas_ shape, that hee To mortal eyes might sweetly shine in her. It is most true, for since I did her see, Vertues great beautie in her face I prove, And finde defect; for I doe burne in love.” (xxv.) Shakespeare is able to praise the beauty of the subject of his sonnets by identifying him with the absolute beauty of the Platonic philosophy, and by describing him in accordance with this notion. Thus he confesses that his argument is simply the fair, kind, and true, back of which statement may be inferred the theory upheld by Platonism that the good, the beautiful, and the true are but different phases of one reality. His love, he says, cannot be called idolatry because his songs are directed to this theme, for only in his friend are these three themes united into one. “Let not my love be call’d idolatry, Nor my belovéd as an idol show, Since all alike my songs and praises be To one, of one, still such, and ever so. Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, Still constant in a wondrous excellence; Therefore my verse to constancy confined, One thing expressing, leaves out difference. ‘Fair, kind, and true’ is all my argument, ‘Fair, kind, and true’ varying to other words; And in this change is my invention spent, Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. ‘Fair, kind, and true,’ have often liv’d alone, Which three, till now, never kept seat in one.” (cv.)