Plato does not himself assign them a special name; for him they belong in the more general class of "craft" (
technē), which includes all skills in making or doing, from woodcraft to statecraft. In the
Sophist (265–266), crafts are divided into "acquisitive" and "productive," the latter being subdivided into (1) production of actual objects, which may be either human or divine (plants and elements by god, houses and knives by men), and (2) production of "images" (
idola), which may also be human or divine (reflections and dreams by god; pictures by men). Images, which imitate their originals but cannot fulfill their function, are further subdivided; the imitator may produce (1) a genuine likeness (
eikon), with the same properties as his model, or (2) an apparent likeness, or semblance (
phantasma), which merely
looks like the original (as when the architect makes his columns swell at the top so that they will not appear to diminish). There is thus false imitation, the making of deceptive semblances. Yet Plato finds this distinction troublesome to maintain, for it is essential to any imitation that in some way it falls short of its original; if it were perfect, it would not be an image (
eidolon), but another example of the same thing, another bed or knife (
Cratylus 432).
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