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original ideal image. The original is not, however, a super mundane realitybut something “real,” something from the natural or human world. 234As reasonable as this argument may be for Beppo, Don Juan is not the same poem,and does not express the same ideas, not least because it was written over a muchlonger period of the poet’s life.Idealism in its traditional form is referred to in Don Juan in the commentary on love:“some heathenish philosophers /Make Love the Main Spring of the Universe”(9.73.583-4). The commentary seems to adopt these philosophers’ view at least inpart, and so continues for eight stanzas, with love acting as a Platonic Ideal, a valuewhich dominates the operation of the physical world. The particular appeal of thisposition might be the noumenalist aspect in which Ideals can exist even withoutachieving perfect manifestation in the material world, remaining simply ideas. Assuch, they neither invalidate nor are invalidated by agnosis: they only need to beconceivable, not observable, in order to exist. Idealism and agnosis happily co-exist,so long as the Idealism is not too rigidly affirmed, and this is especially true for asunsystematic an agnosticism as Don Juan’s. This Idealist position even encompassesthe protagonist, as Juan himself isreal or ideal, –For both are much the same, since what men thinkExists when the once thinkers are less realThan what they thought, for mind can never sink (10.20.153-6).The idea that the mind can never sink, an idea which recurs throughout Byron’spoetry, is linked to the Idealist concept of the Ideals existing above and beyond thematerial realm, being the original Platonic metaphysics. This is highlighted in thepoem’s reference to Bishop Berkeley:What a sublime discovery ’twas to make the234 McGann, Fiery Dust, p.290.152