The Thinker 121
how stifl ing it is to be limited to looking at the world as a mere the-
ater of desire.
He wanders the cave much as he wanders Athens, exposing the
limits of confi ned life again and again. But what he does not do— and
what his pupil Plato does, though in his name—is attempt to leave the
limited reality of Athens and the cave and rise to another level, the
level of true and unconditioned reality. The student of Socrates will
surely spend some time in the cave, exploring the sorrows of conven-
tional life, but then, if he is like Plato, he will seek something better.
He will make his way up into the bright world that lies outside. He’ll
stop thinking about Athens and his own immediate life and begin
thinking about what is true for all men and women at all times.
In the beginning it hurts to enter the sunlight. The young person
who is genuinely becoming a thinker can’t look directly up at the
sky, where Truth resides. He can only look at the refl ections of the
moon and stars and, in time, the sun in streams and pools of water.
But gradually he becomes accustomed to the light. He starts to ex-
pand his mind to the point where he does not take it as suffi cient to
brood on what is good and true for himself or his family or even his
nation or race. He wants now to think about what is good for
everyone. This expansion of mind is painful. We are far more com-
fortable in the cave, where we can think about what we want for our-
selves. We’re at ease refl ecting on what we hope to achieve in our
lives and what pleasures we might enjoy. Outside in the sun, we feel
the demand that we forget ourselves and live for more consequen-
tial matters. But this demand is diffi cult and painful to contemplate.
How will we live now? Who will take care of us? Plato’s fable is the
story of the passage from the State of the Self to the State of Soul.
The passage hurts. It maybe even run against the grain of our bio-
logical natures. It is the passage from I to we, and from now to all-
times; it is a great enlargement and, like every such achievement, it
can be strenuous and disturbing.