All major religions suggest that such sincere morality is rewarded with eternal gain that outweighs any of the inconveniences of a moral life. And because it is impossible to have a purely moral action with selfish intentions, it is impossible for reward to ever be the motivation for true morality.


	Poet Christopher Marlow advised us all to “Live and die in Aristotle's works.” Some would suggest that we already do. Rarely does any one man so dramatically shape the future of our entire race as Aristotle did. Philosopher Bryan Magee said of him, "it is doubtful whether any human being has ever known as much as he did." Just as noteworthy in philosophical history, however, was his predecessor, teacher, and friend, Plato. The work of these two men account for a great deal of our modern concepts of logic and truth. Yet there was at least one point on which they had a considerable amount of disagreement: a concept known as Forms.
	According to Plato, who originated the general theory of Forms, Forms are the pure conceptual version of every perceivable object or quality. For example, every tree that we see is merely a tree. Each of them is an imperfect replica of the tree, or the Form from which all other trees are derived. The Forms are intangible, exist outside of space and time, and are perfect. They are the very essence of their prospective objects, what gives an object its identity and definition. Now that a basic understanding of Forms has been established, let us examine Plato’s beliefs specifically.
	Plato believed that Forms existed in an abstract state, and that they are the only things that actually exist within reality. He categorizes reality into two main categories: the sensible world and the intelligible realm. The sensible world is the world that we experience, the things that our senses can inform us of. It is home to particular objects, rather than Forms, and is within time and space. It is imperfect, which is why there are so many visible differences between objects of the same variety. Because of the constant change that occurs, any information gained within it can merely be opinion, not actual knowledge. Contrastingly, the intelligible realm is home to the Forms. It exists outside of space and time, and is perfect and unchanging. Men who exist within the sensible world cannot experience the intelligible realm, but they can know of it, and Plato believed such knowledge to be true wisdom.
	Plato maintained that Forms are the primary substance from which all other things are derived. They are the roots of everything that we can perceive, and are in fact what enables anything that exists in the sensible world to do so. By his line of reasoning, the Form of a horse is what enables any particular horse to exist.
	Herein lies the most significant point of disagreement between Plato and his student, Aristotle. Aristotle throws a wrench in the gears of Plato’s theory by doing what philosophers do best, asking one simple question. 