a "blueprint" of ...perfection

eidos...idea...morphe... the universal nature which receives all bodies —that must always be called the same; for, while receiving all things, she never departs at all from her own nature, and never...assumes a form like that of any of the things which enter into her; ... But the forms which enter into and go out of her are the likenesses of real existences modelled after their patterns in a wonderful and inexplicable manner....the things we ordinarily perceive in the world are characterized as shadows of the real things, which we do not perceive directly...phainomena ...It did not start, there is no duration in time, and it will not end. It is neither eternal in the sense of existing forever nor mortal. It exists outside time altogether... outside the world, but they are not in the mind...Forms are extra-mental... Plato