le, has no independent existence apart from particular round things. You cannot think the Form roundness without thinking of a particular round thing. Aristotle: example, a statue is a chunk of marble (matter) with a certain form (statue). Each thing is made of a particular matter and has a particular form. Neither form nor matter is ever found in isolation from the other (except for God). Things do change; they become something new. Plato: Example: Beauty. A beautiful statue and a beautiful house are two very different objects. But they have something in common, they both quality as beautiful. Beauty is not something you encounter directly in the physical world. What you encounter in the physical world is always some object or other - statue or house - that may or may not be beautiful. Beauty itself is not something you meet up with; rather, you meet up with objects that to varying degrees possess beauty. Beauty is an ideal thing, not a concrete thing. It would be a mistake to think that forms are just ideas or concepts in our minds. Before there were minds there were beautiful things; round things. Forms are eternal and unchanging. Beauty and roundness have no age. The circumference of a circle is equal to times twice the radius distance, regardless of the circle, time, or place. Forms are unmoving and indivisible. What sense would it make to suppose that they might move or be physically divided? Only Forms are truly real. A thing is beautiful only to the extent it participates in the Form beauty; it is round only if it participates in the Form roundness. Likewise a thing is large only if it participates in the form largeness. The same principle holds for all of a thing's properties. Thus, a large, beautiful, round thing - would not be beautiful, large, or round if the forms beauty, largeness, and roundness did not exist. Objects owe their reality to Forms. So the ultimate reality belongs to the Forms. Of course, Plato was aware that ...
