What we know of Socrates we know only through Plato. Plato, then, is his student. Plato is especially important in the context of the ancient church and in particular the idea of Plato that there should be a distinction between the perfect world above and the inferior, the world down below, the world down here. The physical world of physical, material things [is] always changing, always in flux, therefore negative; but the world above, timeless truths or ideas or what were called forms. And so [there