Very true, he said; but in your presence, even if I had any faint notion, I could not muster courage to utter it. Will you enquire yourself?
Well then, shall we begin the enquiry in our usual manner: Whenever a number of individuals have a common name, we assume them to have also a corresponding idea or form. Do you understand me?
I do.
Let us take any common instance; there are beds and tables in the world—plenty of them, are there not?
Yes.
But there are only two ideas or forms of them—one the idea of a bed, the other of a table.
True.
And the maker of either of them makes a bed or he makes a table for our use, in accordance with the idea—that is our way of speaking in this and similar instances—but no artificer makes the ideas themselves: how could he?
Impossible.
And there is another artist,—I should like to know what you would say of him.