Greek thought never made asharp separation between the rational and perfect realm and the natural world. The latter was indeed inferior and infected with non-being or privation. But it did not stand in any sharp dualism to the higher and perfect reality. Greek thinking ac- cepted the senses, the body and nature with natural piety and found in nature ahierarchy of forms leading degree by de- gree to the divine. The soul was the realized actuality of the body, as reason was the transcendent realization of the intima- tion of ideal forms contained in the soul. The senses included within themselves forms which needed only to be stripped of their material accretions to be true stepping stones to higher knowledge.