They  are  even  more  wonderful ;  in  fact,  they  are  quite  too
wonderful  to  have  had  any  such  lowly  origin  as  Socrates
supposes.  Ideas  cannot  owe  their  origin  to  the  shifting,
precarious  conditions  of  social  life.  Moreover,  ideas  al-
ways precede  experiences.  We  have  the  idea  of  the  thing
before  we  have  the  thing;  at  least,  the  clear  idea  is  neces-
sary to  a  clear  experience.  Certainly  ideas  exist  as  pat-
terns before  anything  worth  making  can  be  made.  This
proves  that  ideas  exist  before  things.  Things  are  but  im-
perfect copies  of  ideas ;  ideas  are  the  original  reality  of  the
world.  The  universe  is  first,  a  great  system  of  ideas,  ex-
istent before  all  things;  and  the  world  is  but  "a  shadow"
or  copy  of  some  perfect,  preexistent  idea.  Ideas  are  older
than  all  things  else,  the  eternal  realities  of  which  all  earthly
things  are  but  shadowy  copies.  Ideas  are  the  eternal  forms
or  patterns,  according  to  which  all  things  were  made  or  pat-
terned.
According  to  Plato,  Socrates  seems  also  to  have  been  mis-
taken in  his  conception  of  the  nature  of  ideas.  Socrates
seems  to  have  thought  of  ideas  as  " social  bonds"  growing
up  in  the  midst  of,  and  out  of,  the  very  conditions  of  social
life.    Plato  thinks  of  ideas  as  "social  forms"  coming  down


THE  CONSTRUCTION  OF  PLATO  87

upon  the  social  world  from  the  heaven  of  preexistent  forms.
Socrates  seems  to  have  thought  that  ideas  are  flexible,  plas-
tic, growing  bonds;  for  Plato  ideas  seem  to  have  a  fixed
character.  They  are  finished,  permanent  forms;  they  are
like  final  systems;  they  control  life  not  by  growing  up
within  it,  but  by  coming  down  upon  it,  surrounding  it  much
as  a  hoop  surrounds  a  barrel  and  holds  the  staves  together.
