55

Logic IV. 63
possibly be that written words mere meant. Now having reach suggestions by resemblance Plato reasons very strangely. He notes that the resemblance is never perfect. Yet we are quite sure that there is such a relationas absolute resemblance thoughwe never experience it. Where did weget the idea. It mush be reminiscence of a previous life. I may remark that this of course is absurd because having by experience the ideas of greater and less resemblance we have but to combine them differently to get the idea of perfect resemblance. For example having got the idea of subtraction from experience we hav only to think of subtracting the whole of a quantity to get the idea of zero and having the idea of zero and of difference in fewer respects we readily get the idea of difference in no respect. But even in cases where we have no such experiential ways of reaching an idea we may still reach it by the suggestions of the language of other symbols we use. The most I have translated by perfect resemblance