A little more than a hundred years after Thomas Traherne taught his fellow-men 'from experience' that there is an original condition of man's soul, before it is yet able to prize 'those living stars, mine eyes', in which it is endowed with the faculty to see 'the true (fair) Ideas of all things', Goethe was led to the realization that he had achieved the possibility of 'seeing Ideas with the very eyes'. Although he was himself not aware of it, the conception of the Idea was at this moment restored through him to its true and original Platonic significance.