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“Next,” said I, “compare
our nature in respect of education and its lack to such an experience as this.
Picture men dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern1 with a long entrance open2 to the light on its entire width.
Conceive them as having their legs and necks fettered3 from childhood, so that
they remain in the same spot,
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able to look
forward only, and prevented by the fetters from turning their heads. Picture
further the light from a fire burning higher up and at a distance behind them,
and between the fire and the prisoners and above them a road along which a low
wall has been built, as the exhibitors of puppet-shows4 have partitions
before the men themselves, above which they show the puppets.”
“All that I see,” he said. “See also, then, men
carrying5 past the wall
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implements of all kinds that rise above the wall,
and human images
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and shapes of animals as well, wrought in stone and wood and
every material, some of these bearers presumably speaking and others
silent.” “A strange image you speak of,” he said,
“and strange prisoners.” “Like to us,” I
said; “for, to begin with, tell me do you think that these men would
have seen anything of themselves or of one another except the shadows cast from
the fire on the wall of the cave that fronted them?” “How
could they,” he said, “if they were compelled
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to hold their heads unmoved through
life?” “And again, would not the same be true of the objects
carried past them?” “Surely.” “If then
they were able to talk to one another, do you not think that they would suppose
that in naming the things that they saw6 they were naming the passing objects?”
“Necessarily.” “And if their prison had an
echo7 from the wall opposite them, when one of the
passersby uttered a sound, do you think that they would suppose anything else
than the passing shadow to be the speaker?” “By Zeus, I do
not,” said he. “Then in every way
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such prisoners would deem reality to be nothing else than
the shadows of the artificial objects.” “Quite
inevitably,” he said. “Consider, then, what would be the
manner of the release8 and healing from these bonds and this folly if in the
course of nature9 something of this sort should happen to
them: When one was freed from his fetters and compelled to stand up suddenly and
turn his head around and walk and to lift up his eyes to the light, and in doing
all this felt pain and, because of the dazzle and glitter of the light, was
unable to discern the objects whose shadows he formerly saw,
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what do you suppose would be his answer if someone told him
that what he had seen before was all a cheat and an illusion, but that now,
being nearer to reality and turned toward more real things, he saw more truly?
And if also one should point out to him each of the passing objects and
constrain him by questions to say what it is, do you not think that he would be
at a loss10 and that he would regard what he
formerly saw as more real than the things now pointed out to him?”
“Far more real,” he said.“And if he were compelled to look at the light itself,
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would not that pain his eyes, and would he not turn
away and flee to those things which he is able to discern and regard them as in
very deed more clear and exact than the objects pointed out?”
“It is so,” he said. “And if,” said I,
“someone should drag him thence by force up the ascent11 which is rough and steep, and not let him go
before he had drawn him out into the light of the sun, do you not think that he
would find it painful to be so haled along, and would chafe at it, and when
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he came
out into the light, that his eyes would be filled with its beams so that he
would not be able to see12 even one of the things that we
call real?” “Why, no, not immediately,” he said.
“Then there would be need of habituation, I take it, to enable him to
see the things higher up. And at first he would most easily discern the shadows
and, after that, the likenesses or reflections in water13 of men and other
things, and later, the things themselves, and from these he would go on to
contemplate the appearances in the heavens and heaven itself, more easily by
night, looking at the light
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of the stars and
the moon, than by day the sun and the sun's light.14” “Of course.”
“And so, finally, I suppose, he would be able to look upon the sun
itself and see its true nature, not by reflections in water or phantasms of it
in an alien setting,15 but in and by itself in its own place.”
“Necessarily,” he said. “And at this point he
would infer and conclude that this it is that provides the seasons and the
courses of the year and presides over all things in the visible region,
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and is in some sort the cause16 of all these things that they had
seen.” “Obviously,” he said, “that would
be the next step.” “Well then, if he recalled to mind his
first habitation and what passed for wisdom there, and his fellow-bondsmen, do
you not think that he would count himself happy in the change and pity them17?”
“He would indeed.” “And if there had been honors
and commendations among them which they bestowed on one another and prizes for
the man who is quickest to make out the shadows as they pass and best able to
remember their customary precedences,
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sequences and co-existences,18 and so most successful in guessing at
what was to come, do you think he would be very keen about such rewards, and
that he would envy and emulate those who were honored by these prisoners and
lorded it among them, or that he would feel with Homer19 and “‘greatly prefer while living on earth to be serf of another, a
landless man,’”Hom. Od. 11.489 and
endure anything rather than opine with them
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and live that life?” “Yes,” he said,
“I think that he would choose to endure anything rather than such a
life.” “And consider this also,” said I,
“if such a one should go down again and take his old place would he
not get his eyes full20 of darkness,
thus suddenly coming out of the sunlight?” “He would
indeed.” “Now if he should be required to contend with these
perpetual prisoners
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in 'evaluating' these shadows while his vision was still dim
and before his eyes were accustomed to the dark—and this time required
for habituation would not be very short—would he not provoke
laughter,21 and would it not be said of him that he
had returned from his journey aloft with his eyes ruined and that it was not
worth while even to attempt the ascent? And if it were possible to lay hands on
and to kill the man who tried to release them and lead them up, would they not
kill him22?” “They certainly
would,” he said.“This image
then, dear Glaucon, we must apply as a whole to all that has been said,
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likening the region revealed through
sight to the habitation of the prison, and the light of the fire in it to the
power of the sun. And if you assume that the ascent and the contemplation of the
things above is the soul's ascension to the intelligible region,23 you will not miss my surmise, since that is what you desire
to hear. But God knows24 whether it is true. But, at any
rate, my dream as it appears to me is that in the region of the known the last
thing to be seen and hardly seen is the idea of good,
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and that when seen it must needs point us to the conclusion
that this is indeed the cause for all things of all that is right and beautiful,
giving birth25 in the visible
world to light, and the author of light and itself in the intelligible world
being the authentic source of truth and reason, and that anyone who is to act
wisely26 in
private or public must have caught sight of this.” “I
concur,” he said, “so far as I am able.”
“Come then,” I said, “and join me in this further
thought, and do not be surprised that those who have attained to this height are
not willing27 to occupy themselves with the affairs of men, but
their souls ever feel the upward urge and
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the yearning for that sojourn above. For this, I take it, is likely if in this
point too the likeness of our image holds” “Yes, it is
likely.” “And again, do you think it at all
strange,” said I, “if a man returning from divine
contemplations to the petty miseries28 of men cuts a sorry figure29 and appears most ridiculous, if, while still
blinking through the gloom, and before he has become sufficiently accustomed to
the environing darkness, he is compelled in courtrooms30 or elsewhere to contend about the shadows of justice or the
images31 that cast the shadows and to wrangle in debate
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about the notions of these things in the minds of
those who have never seen justice itself?” “It would be by
no men strange,” he said. “But a sensible man,”
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I said,
“would remember that there are two distinct disturbances of the eyes
arising from two causes, according as the shift is from light to darkness or
from darkness to light,32 and, believing
that the same thing happens to the soul too, whenever he saw a soul perturbed
and unable to discern something, he would not laugh33 unthinkingly, but
would observe whether coming from a brighter life its vision was obscured by the
unfamiliar darkness, or
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whether the passage
from the deeper dark of ignorance into a more luminous world and the greater
brightness had dazzled its vision.34
And so35 he would deem the one happy in its
experience and way of life and pity the other, and if it pleased him to laugh at
it, his laughter would be less laughable than that at the expense of the soul
that had come down from the light above.” “That is a very
fair statement,” he said.“Then, if this is true, our view of these matters must be this, that
education is not in reality what some people proclaim it to be in their
professions.36
[518c]
What they aver is that they can put true
knowledge into a soul that does not possess it, as if they were inserting37 vision
into blind eyes.” “They do indeed,” he said.
“But our present argument indicates,” said I,
“that the true analogy for this indwelling power in the soul and the
instrument whereby each of us apprehends is that of an eye that could not be
converted to the light from the darkness except by turning the whole body. Even
so this organ of knowledge must be turned around from the world of becoming
together with the entire soul, like the scene-shifting periact38
in the theater, until the soul is able to endure the contemplation of essence
and the brightest region of being.
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And this,
we say, is the good,39 do we not?”
“Yes.” “Of this very thing, then,” I
said, “there might be an art,40 an art of the speediest and most effective
shifting or conversion of the soul, not an art of producing vision in it, but on
the assumption that it possesses vision but does not rightly direct it and does
not look where it should, an art of bringing this about.”
“Yes, that seems likely,” he said. “Then the other
so-called virtues41 of the soul do seem
akin to those of the body.
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For it is true
that where they do not pre-exist, they are afterwards created by habit42 and practice. But the excellence of
thought,43 it
seems, is certainly of a more divine quality, a thing that never loses its
potency, but, according to the direction of its conversion, becomes useful and
beneficent,
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or, again, useless and harmful. Have you never observed in those who are
popularly spoken of as bad, but smart men,44 how
keen is the vision of the little soul,45 how quick it is to discern the things that
interest it,46 a proof that it is not a poor vision which it has,
but one forcibly enlisted in the service of evil, so that the sharper its sight
the more mischief it accomplishes?” “I certainly
have,” he said. “Observe then,” said I,
“that this part of such a soul, if it had been hammered from
childhood, and had thus been struck free47 of the leaden weights, so to speak,
of our birth
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and becoming, which attaching
themselves to it by food and similar pleasures and gluttonies turn downwards the
vision of the soul48—If, I say,
freed from these, it had suffered a conversion towards the things that are real
and true, that same faculty of the same men would have been most keen in its
vision of the higher things, just as it is for the things toward which it is now
turned.” “It is likely,” he said. “Well,
then,” said I, “is not this also likely49 and
a necessary consequence of what has been said, that neither could men who are
uneducated and inexperienced in truth ever adequately
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preside over a state, nor could those who had been permitted
to linger on to the end in the pursuit of culture—the one because they
have no single aim50 and
purpose in life to which all their actions, public and private, must be
directed, and the others, because they will not voluntarily engage in action,
believing that while still living they have been transported to the Islands of
the Blest.51” “True,” he
said. “It is the duty of us, the founders, then,” said I,
“to compel the best natures to attain the knowledge which we
pronounced the greatest, and to win to the vision of the good,
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to scale that ascent, and when they have reached
the heights and taken an adequate view, we must not allow what is now
permitted.” “What is that?” “That they
should linger there,” I said, “and refuse to go down
again52 among those bondsmen and share
their labors and honors, whether they are of less or of greater
worth.” “Do you mean to say that we must do them this wrong,
and compel them to live an inferior life when the better is in their
power?”
[519e]
“You have again forgotten,53 my friend,”
said I, “that the law is not concerned with the special happiness of
any class in the state, but is trying to produce this condition54 in the city as a whole, harmonizing and adapting the
citizens to one another by persuasion and compulsion,55 and requiring them to impart to one another any benefit56
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which they
are severally able to bestow upon the community, and that it itself creates such
men in the state, not that it may allow each to take what course pleases him,
but with a view to using them for the binding together of the
commonwealth.” “True,” he said, “I did
forget it.” “Observe, then, Glaucon,” said I,
“that we shall not be wronging, either, the philosophers who arise
among us, but that we can justify our action when we constrain them to take
charge of the other citizens and be their guardians.57
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For we will say to them that it is natural
that men of similar quality who spring up in other cities should not share in
the labors there. For they grow up spontaneously58 from no volition of the government in the several states, and it is
justice that the self-grown, indebted to none for its breeding, should not be
zealous either to pay to anyone the price of its nurture.59 But you
we have engendered for yourselves and the rest of the city to be, as it were,
king-bees60
and leaders in the hive. You have received a better
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and more complete education61 than the others, and you are more capable
of sharing both ways of life. Down you must go62 then, each in his turn, to the
habitation of the others and accustom yourselves to the observation of the
obscure things there. For once habituated you will discern them infinitely63 better than the dwellers there,
and you will know what each of the ‘idols’64 is and whereof it is a semblance, because you have
seen the reality of the beautiful, the just and the good. So our city will be
governed by us and you with waking minds, and not, as most cities now which are
inhabited and ruled darkly as in a dream
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