 The imitative activity of the Craftsman, who forms the universe as an imitation of an eternal model , is unlike that of a builder who replicates a larger- or smaller-scale three-dimensional structure as model, but like that of a builder who follows a set of instructions or schematics. That set is the intelligible, non-material and non-spatial model that prescribes the features of the structure to be built; it is not a structure itself. It is a matter of debate whether Plato’s middle-period metaphysics included the view that forms were, or exhibited, some grander, unalloyed version of some of the properties exhibited by sensible objects. Arguably such a view (call it “crude paradeigmatism”) was refuted by the “Third Man” argument of the Parmenides (132a). As invisible, intangible, and non-spatial entities forms are excluded from possessing properties that only visible, tangible and spatial object may possess. Nevertheless, in so far as they are or exhibit intelligible natures forms may, like a set of instructions or schematics, serve as models to be “looked at” (28a7, 29a3) by anyone who understands those natures and is in a position to construct a world in accordance with them. (This view of the Craftsman’s imitative activity might by contrast be described as “refined  paradeigmatism.”[15])