REPUBLIC(BOOKVI) 115
“And I don’t imagine,” I said, “that there are many others either, not to say none,
that have any additional need for such a thing, or can you name any?”
“Not for my part,” he said.
“But don’t you realize that the power of sight and being seen does have an addi-
tional need?”
“How’s that?”
“Presumably you’re aware that when sight is present in eyes and the one who has
it attempts to use it, and color is present there in things, unless there’s also a third kind
of thing present, of a nature specifically for this very purpose, sight will see nothing and
colors will be invisible.”
“What’s this thing you’re speaking of?” he said.
“The one you call light,” I said.
“It’s true, as you say,” he said.
“Then the sense of sight and the power of being seen have been bound together by
a bond more precious, by no small look, than that uniting other pairs, unless light is
something to be despised.”
“Surely it’s far from being despised,” he said.
“And which of the divine beings in the heavens can you point out as the ruling
power responsible for this, whose light makes our sight see and visible things be seen as
beautifully as possible?”
“The same one you and everyone else would,” he said, “since it’s obvious you’re
asking about the sun.”
“And is it this way that sight is by its nature related to this god?”
“How?”
“The sun is not sight itself, nor is it that in which sight is present, what we call an eye.”
“No indeed.”
“But I imagine that’s the most sunlike of the sense organs.”
“By far.”
“And doesn’t it acquire the power that it has as an overflow from that which is
bestowed by the sun?”
“Very much so.”
“So while the sun isn’t sight, but is the thing responsible for it, isn’t it seen by that
very thing?”
“That’s how it is,” he said.
“Now then,” I said, “say that this is what I’m calling the offspring of the good,
which the good generated as something analogous to itself; the very thing the good
itself is in the intelligible realm in relation to insight and the intelligible things, this is in
the visible realm in relation to sight and the visible things.”
“How so?” he said. “Go into it more for me.”
“With eyes,” I said, “do you know that when one no longer turns them on those
things to whose colors the light of day extends, but on those on which nocturnal lights fall,
they grow dim, and appear nearly blind, just as though no pure sight was present in them?”
“Very much so,” he said.
“But I imagine that whenever one turns them to the things the sun illumines, they
see them clearly, and pure sight is manifestly present in these very same eyes.”
“Certainly.”
“In this manner, think of the power of the soul too as being the same way. Whenever
it becomes fixed on that which truth and being illumine, it has insight, discerns, and shows
itself to have an intellect, but whenever it becomes fixed on something mixed with
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