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If eternal ideas are the only pure beings and the world of ideas is the only real world, from where
has appeared the changing world of sense? To explain this Plato postulates another principle‐the
principle of Not‐Being which means what is other than Being. [8] Not‐Being is the same thing as
matter. It is unreal and yet exists as a formless substratum of the phenomenal world. When this
formless Not‐Being receives the impression of ideas, the world of sense‐perception appears. It has
reality only in so far as it has the impress of ideas. In so far as it is material, it is unreal. It is,
therefore, wrong to call it the real world. It is merely a world of shadows.
Cosmology ‐ In the sphere of cosmology Plato does not find himself on solid ground and,
therefore, claims only probability for his cosmological views.
God, the maker of the world, fashioned its body out of the four elements leaving no part of them
outside, after the pattern of the world of ideas. In order to make it as perfect as possible, He put
intelligence into it and placed in its centre the world‐soul, which had been created earlier to be its
ruler and mistress. Thus, the world became a veritable living creature endowed with intelligence
and soul. As there could be only one best possible, copy of the original, there is only one world
and it is in the best of all forms, the spherical form.
Then by some mathematical manipulation of the parts of the world, the Creator made the orbits
of the seven heavens. He sought to make the world eternal so far as it might be. Now, to bestow
eternity, an attribute of the ideal world, in its fullness upon a creature was impossible. Therefore
He created time as the moving image of eternity. He then made the sun to measure the
movement of the planets, and thus brought about day and night: Thus was followed by the
creation of the heavenly race of the gods (the stars and planets) and the species in air and water
and the wild animals on land. Thus having been done, the Creator Himself, made the divine part of
man, reason, mixed it with the four elements, divided the mixture into souls equal in number to
the stars, and assigned each soul to a star. He then ordered the gods, His children, to do the rest
to complete the universe by interweaving the mortal with the immortal. These children of the
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