The lovers of sights and sounds

The lovers of sights and sounds, I replied, are as I conceive, fond of fine tones and colours and dorms and all the artificial products that are made out of them. But their mind is incapable of seeing or loving absolute beauty. True, he replied, few are they who are able to attain to the sight of this. Very true, and he who having a sense of  beautiful things but not absolute beauty or who,  if another led him to a knowledge of that beauty, is unable to follow, of such and one I ask is he awake or in a dream only? Reflect, is not the dreamer sleeping or waking, one who likens dissimilar things, who puts a copy in the place of the real object? I should certainly say that such, and one, was dreaming. But take the case of the other who recognises the existence of absolute beauty and is able to distinguish the idea from the objects which participate in the idea, neither putting the objects in the place of the idea nor the idea on the place of the objects. Is he a dreamer or is he awake? He is wide awake. And may we not say that the mind of the one who knows has knowledge and that the mind of the other, who opines only, has opinion? Certainly. The Republic Book 3