1 Plato 2 · On the Cave and the Light. Handed down at the Academy, from his Republic
What is set down here Plato said between his fortieth year and his seventieth. In chapter 4 he records that he changed his mind, and refuses to strike out the older saying. Where he speaks of the Good, this scripture takes the smaller reading: that which makes each thing what it is, and is not itself one of the things.
2.1Now unchain one of them, and make him stand up and turn around.
2.2Every one of those things hurts.
2.3His neck hurts, because it has not turned in thirty years.
2.4His eyes hurt, because the fire is brighter than the shadows.
2.5Ask him: do you see more clearly now? He will say no.
2.6He will say: before, I saw perfectly well. Now everything is smeared.
2.7He will even want to turn back to the wall he knows.
2.8Here is the important sentence, Glaucon. Listen to it.
2.9To teach a man is not to put sight into blind sockets.
2.10The eyes were already there. He has carried them all his life.
2.11What has to move is not the eyes. It is which way the whole man is facing.
2.12So teaching is not pouring in. It is turning around.
2.13Pouring in is something another man does to you. Turning around is a pain you eat yourself.
2.14Whoever says he was made to understand and felt nothing has not turned. He has only changed walls.