“Now if he should be required to contend with these perpetual prisoners 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, Like the philosopher in the court-room. Cf. Theaet. 172 C, 173 C ff., Gorg. 484 D-E. Cf. also on 387 C-D. 515 D, 517 D, Soph. 216 D, Laches 196 B, Phaedr. 249 D. 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 him An obvious allusion to the fate of Socrates. For other stinging allusions to this Cf. Gorg. 486 B, 521 C, Meno 100 B-C. Cf. Hamlet’s Wormwood, wormwood (III. ii. 191). The text is disputed. See crit. note. A. Drachmann, Zu Platons Staat, Hermes, 1926 , p. 110, thinks that an οἴει or something like it must be understood as having preceded, at least in Plato’s thought, and that ἀποκτείνειν can be taken as a gloss or variant of ἀποκτεινύναι and the correct reading must be λαβεῖν, καὶ ἀποκτεινύναι ἄν . See also Adam ad loc. ?” “They certainly would,” he said. 
 “This image then, dear Glaucon, we must apply as a whole to all that has been said, 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, Cf. 508 B-C, where Arnou ( Le Désir de dieu dans la philos. de Plotin, p. 48 and Robin ( La Théorie plat. de l’amour, pp. 83-84) make τόπος νοητός refer to le ciel astronomique as opposed to the ὑπερουράνιος τόπος of the Phaedrus 247 A-E, 248 B, 248 D-249 A. The phrase νοητὸς κόσμος , often attributed to Plato, does not occur in his writings. you will not miss my surmise, since that is what you desire to hear. But God knows Plato was much less prodigal of affirmation about metaphysical ultimates than interpreters who take his myths literally have supposed. Cf. What Plato Said, p. 515, on Meno 86 B. 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, 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 birth Cf. 506 E. 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 wisely This is the main point for the Republic. The significance of the idea of good for cosmogony is just glanced at and reserved for the Timaeus. Cf. on 508 B, p. 102, note a and p. 505-506. For the practical application Cf. Meno 81 D-E. See also Introd. pp. xxxv-xxxvi. 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 willing Cf. 521 A, 345 E, and Vol. I. on 347 D, p. 81, note d. to occupy themselves with the affairs of men, but their souls ever feel the upward urge and 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 miseries Cf. 346 E. of men cuts a sorry figure Cf. Theaet. 174 C ἀσχημοσύνη . 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 courtrooms For the contrast between the philosophical and the pettifogging soul Cf. Theaet. 173 C-175 E. Cf. also on 517 A, p 128, note b. or elsewhere to contend about the shadows of justice or the images For ἀγαλμάτων cf. my Idea of Good in Plato’s Republic, p. 237, Soph. 234 C, Polit. 303 C. that cast the shadows and to wrangle in debate 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,” 
 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, Aristotle, De an. 422 a 20 f. says the over-bright is ἀόρατον but otherwise than the dark. 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 laugh Cf. Theaet. 175 D-E. unthinkingly, but would observe whether coming from a brighter life its vision was obscured by the unfamiliar darkness, or whether the passage from the deeper dark of ignorance into a more luminous world and the greater brightness had dazzled its vision. Lit. or whether coming from a deeper ignorance into a more luminous world, it is dazzled by the brilliance of a greater light. And so i.e. only after that. For οὕτω δή in this sense cf. 484 D, 429 D, 443 E, Charm. 171 E. 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. ἐπαγγελλόμενοι connotes the boastfulness of their claims. Cf. Protag. 319 A, Gorg. 447 c, Laches 186 C, Euthyd. 273 E, Isoc. Soph. 1, 5, 9, 10, Antid. 193, Xen. Mem. iii. 1. 1, i. 2. 8, Aristot. Rhet. 1402 a 25. What they aver is that they can put true knowledge into a soul that does not possess it, as if they were inserting Cf. Theognis 429 ff. Stallbaum compares Eurip. Hippol. 917 f. Similarly Anon. Theaet. Comm. (Berlin, 1905), p. 32, 48. 4 καὶ δεῖν αὐτῇ οὐκ ἐνθέσεως μαθημάτων, ἀλλὰ ἀναμνήσεως . Cf. also St. Augustine: Nolite putare quemquam hominem aliquid discere ab homine. Admonere possumus per strepitum vocis nostrae; and Emerson’s strictly speaking, it is not instruction but provocation that I can receive from another soul. 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 periact περιακτέον is probably a reference to the περίακτοι or triangular prisms on each side of the stage. They revolved on an axis and had different scenes painted on their three faces. Many scholars are of the opinion that they were not known in the classical period, as they are mentioned only by late writers; but others do not consider this conclusive evidence, as a number of classical plays seem to have required something of the sort. Cf. O. Navarre in Daremberg-Saglio s. v. Machine, p. 1469. in the theater, until the soul is able to endure the contemplation of essence and the brightest region of being. And this, we say, is the good, Hard-headed distaste for the unction or seeming mysticism of Plato’s language should not blind us to the plain meaning. Unlike Schopenhauer, who affirms the moral will to be unchangeable, Plato says that men may be preached and drilled into ordinary morality, but that the degree of their intelligence is an unalterable endowment of nature. Some teachers will concur. do we not?” Yes. “Of this very thing, then,” I said, “there might be an art, Plato often distinguishes the things that do or do not admit of reduction to an art or science. Cf. on 488 E p. 22, note b. Adam is mistaken in taking it Education ( ἡ παιδεία ) would be an art, etc. 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 virtues This then is Plato’s answer (intended from the first) to the question whether virtue can be taught, debated in the Protagoras and Meno. The intellectual virtues (to use Aristotle’s term), broadly speaking, cannot be taught; they are a gift. And the highest moral virtue is inseparable from rightly directed intellectual virtue. Ordinary moral virtue is not rightly taught in democratic Athens, but comes by the grace of God. In a reformed state it could be systematically inculcated and taught. Cf. What Plato Said, pp. 51-512 on Meno 70 A. but we need not infer that Plato did not believe in mental discipline. cf. Charles Fox, Educational Psychology, p. 164 The conception of mental discipline is a least as old as Plato, as may be seen from the seventh book of the Republic . . . of the soul do seem akin to those of the body. For it is true that where they do not pre-exist, they are afterwards created by habit Cf. Aristot. Eth. Nic. 1103 a 14-17 ἡ δὲ ἠθικὴ ἐξ ἔθους . Plato does not explicitly name ethical and intellectual virtues. Cf. Fox, op. cit. p. 104 Plato correctly believed . . . and practice. But the excellence of thought, Plato uses such synonyms as φρόνησις, σοφία, νοῦς, διάνοια , etc., as suits his purpose and context. He makes no attempt to define and discriminate them with impracticable Aristotelian meticulousness. 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, 
 or, again, useless and harmful. Have you never observed in those who are popularly spoken of as bad, but smart men, Cf. Theaet. 176 D, Laws 689 C-D, Cic. De offic. i. 19, and also Laws 819 A. how keen is the vision of the little soul, Cf. Theaet. 195 A, ibid. 173 A σμικροὶ . . . τὰς ψυχάς , Marcus Aurelius’ ψυχάριον εἶ βαστάζων νεκρόν , Swinburne’s A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man ( Hymn to Proserpine, in fine ), Tennyson’s If half the little soul is dirt. how quick it is to discern the things that interest it, Lit. Toward which it is turned. 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 free The meaning is plain, the precise nature of the image that carries it is doubtful. Jowett’s circumcision was suggested by Stallbaum’s purgata ac circumcisa, but carries alien associations. The whole may be compared with the incrustation of the soul, 611 C-D, and with Phaedo 81 B f. of the leaden weights, so to speak, of our birth and becoming, which attaching themselves to it by food and similar pleasures and gluttonies turn downwards the vision of the soul Or eye of the mind. Cf. 533 D, Sym. 219 A, Soph. 254 A, Aristot. Eth. 1144 a 30 , and the parallels and imitations collected by Gomperz, Apol. der Heilkunst, 166-167. cf. also What Plato Said, p. 534, on Phaedo 99 E, Ovid, Met. 15.64: . . . quae natura negabat Visibus humanis, oculis ea pectoris hausit. Cf. Friedlander, Platon, i. pp. 12-13, 15, and perhaps Odyssey , i. 115, Marc. Aurel. iv. 29 καταμύειν τῷ νοερῷ ὄμματι . —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 likely For likely and necessary cf. on 485 C, p. 6, note c. and a necessary consequence of what has been said, that neither could men who are uneducated and inexperienced in truth ever adequately 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 aim σκοπόν : this is what distinguishes the philosophic statesman from the opportunist politician. Cf. 452 E, Laws 962 A-B, D, Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 18 n. 102. 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. Cf. 540 B, Gorg . 526 C, 520 D ἐν τῷ καθαρῷ and Phaedo 114 C, 109 B. Because they will still suppose that they are building Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land (Blake). ” 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, 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 again Cf. 539 E and Laws 803 B-C, and on 520 C, Huxley, Evolution and Ethics, p. 53 the hero of our story descended the bean-stalk and came back to the common world, etc. 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?” 
 “You have again forgotten, Cf. Vol. I. pp. 314-315 on 419. 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 condition i.e. happiness, not of course exceptional happiness. in the city as a whole, harmonizing and adapting the citizens to one another by persuasion and compulsion, Persuasion and compulsion are often bracketed or contrasted. Cf. also Laws 661 C, 722 B, 711 C, Rep . 548 B. and requiring them to impart to one another any benefit Cf. 369 C ff. The reference there however is only to the economic division of labor. For the idea that laws should be for the good of the whole state cf. 420 B ff., 466 A, 341-342, Laws 715 B, 757 D, 875 A. 
 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.”