The snub-nosed youth is said to have a winning grace; the beak of another has a royal look; the featureless are faultless; the dark are manly, the fair angels; the sickly have a new term of endearment invented expressly for them, which is 'honey-pale.' Lovers of wine and lovers of ambition also desire the objects of their affection in every form.

Now here comes the point:--The philosopher too is a lover of knowledge in every form; he has an insatiable curiosity.

'But will curiosity make a philosopher?
Are the lovers of sights and sounds, who let out their ears to every chorus at the Dionysiac festivals, to be called philosophers ?' They are not true philosophers, but only an imitation.

'Then how are we to describe the true ?' You would acknowledge the existence of abstract ideas, such as justice, beauty, good, evil, which are severally one, yet in their various combinations appear to be many.

Those who recognize these realities are philosophers; whereas the other class hear sounds and see colours, and understand their use in the arts, but cannot attain to the true or waking vision of absolute justice or beauty or truth; they have not the light of knowledge, but of opinion, and what they see is a dream only.
Perhaps he of whom we say the last will be angry with us; can we pacify him without revealing the disorder of his mind?
Suppose we say that, if he has knowledge we rejoice to hear it, but knowledge must be of something which is, as ignorance is of something which is not; and there is a third thing, which both is and is not, and is matter of opinion only.