There have been allusions and references to forms even though readers don't have a definition or example to work with until Book III. This is where I believe it is essential to argue that understanding what a form is is not particularly crucial to making use of it. I doubt that Cephalus realized that his statement about human character depended so much on the composition and quality of souls, and therefore of forms. Nonetheless, he managed to make a workable argument. Socrates also combined wisdom, which we later discover to be conscious of the form of goodness, with justice to argue that justice, among other things, is the education of