122 PLATO
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bcback in, and if this period of adjustment was not very short, wouldn’t he make a laugh-
ingstock of himself, and wouldn’t it be said about him that after having gone up above
he returned with his eyes ruined, and that it’s not worth it even to make the effort to go
up? And as for anyone who attempted to release them and lead them up, if they had the
power in any way to get him into their hands and kill him, wouldn’t they kill him?”
“Ferociously,” he said.
“Now this image, dear Glaucon,” I said, “needs to be connected as a whole with
what was said before, by likening the realm disclosed by sight to the prison dwelling, and
the light of the fire within it to the power of the sun; and if you take the upward journey
and sight of the things above as the soul’s road up into the intelligible region, you won’t
miss my intended meaning, since you have a desire to hear about that. No doubt a god
knows whether it happens to be true. What appears true to me appears this way: in the
knowable region, the last thing to be seen, with great effort, is the look of the good, but
once it’s been seen, it has to be concluded that it’s the very cause, for all things, of all
things right and beautiful, that it generates light and its source in the visible realm, and is
itself the source that bestows truth and insight in the intelligible realm. Anyone who’s
going to act intelligently in private or in public needs to have sight of it.”
“I too join in assuming that,” he said, “at least in whatever way I’m able to.”
“Come, then,” I said, “and join in assuming the following as well, and don’t be
surprised that those who’ve come to this point aren’t willing to do what belongs to
human beings, but their souls are eager to spend all their time up above; presumably it’s
likely to be that way, if this also stands in accord with the image already described.”
“It’s certainly likely,” he said.
“And what about this? Do you imagine it’s anything surprising,” I said, “if some-
one coming from contemplation of divine things to things of a human sort is awkward
and looks extremely ridiculous while his sight is still dim and if, before he’s become
sufficiently accustomed to the darkness around him, he’s forced, in law courts or any-
where else, to contend over the shadows of the just or the images they’re the shadows
of, and to compete about that in whatever way these things are understood by people
who’ve never looked upon justice itself?”
“It’s not surprising in any way whatsoever,” he said.
“But if someone had any sense,” I said, “he’d remember that two sorts of distur-
bances occur in the eyes from two causes, when they’re removed from light into dark-
ness as well as from darkness into light. If he regarded these same things as occurring
also with the soul, when he saw one that was confused and unable to make anything out,
he wouldn’t react with irrational laughter but would consider whether it had come from
a brighter life and was darkened by its unaccustomed condition, or was coming out of a
greater ignorance into a brighter place and was overwhelmed by the dazzle of a greater
radiance. That way, he’d congratulate the one soul on the happiness of its experience
and life and pity the other, and if he did want to laugh at that one, he’d be less laughable
for laughing at it than someone who laughed at the one coming out of the light above.”
“You’re speaking in a very balanced way,” he said.
“So,” I said, “if those things are true, we ought to regard them in the following
way: education is not the sort of thing certain people who claim to be professors of it
claim that it is. Surely they claim they put knowledge into a soul it wasn’t present in, as
though they were putting sight into blind eyes.”
“Indeed they do claim that,” he said.
“But the current discussion indicates,” I said, “that this power is present in the
soul of each person, and the instrument by which each one learns, as if it were an eye