“The wind blew a leaf off of the tree.”
1.
Plato’s metaphysical position is the wind, a leaf, and the tree are mere copies of a perfect form of wind, leaf, and tree. There is in reality only one leaf -- leafness, one tree -- treeness -- on wind -- windness, and so on and so forth. What I see in the world is multiplicity but what holds the diversity of all that I see into a single unified world is made possible by a transcendent world of forms that is more perfect and real than this world. This world changes, which accounts for the wind blowing, and the trees ...
