They become aware, in short, of the reality which is behind it, and which is latent in it. It is this reality, and not the object in which the reality is manifested, that thrills the artist to ecstasy, and it is the emotion felt for reality which he conveys to us when he succeeds in transferring to canvas his vision of reality as a combination of pure forms. And now the argument has reached a point at which it can return to Plato. Behind the world of sensible objects, imperfectly manifested in them and overlaid and distorted by the sensuous material in which they appear, lies, so Plato asserted, the ~orld of~o~s.