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[476c] “They would, indeed.” “He, then, who believes in beautiful things, but neither believes in beauty itself nor is able to follow when someone tries to guide him to the knowledge of it—do you think that his life is a dream or a waking1? Just consider. Is not the dream state, whether the man is asleep or awake, just this: the mistaking of resemblance for identity?” “I should certainly call that dreaming,” he said. “Well, then, take the opposite case: the man whose thought recognizes a beauty in itself,

1 The dream state is a very different thing for Plato from what it is for some modern sentimental Platonists. Cf. 520 C-D, Phaedrus 277 D, Timaeus 52 B, and 71 E, if rightly interpreted.

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