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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: several different forms, not merely an earlier and a later one, in the
various Dialogues. They are personal and impersonal, ideals and ideas,
existing by participation or by imitation, one and many, in different parts
of his writings or even in the same passage. They are the universal
definitions of Socrates, and at the same time 'of more than mortal
knowledge' (Rep.). But they are always the negations of sense, of matter,
of generation, of the particular: they are always the subjects of
knowledge and not of opinion; and they tend, not to diversity, but to
unity. Other entities or intelligences are akin to them, but not the same
with them, such as mind, measure, limit, eternity, essence (Philebus;
Timaeus): these and similar terms appear to express the same truths from a
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