1 Plato 2 · On the Cave and the Light. Handed down at the Academy, from his Republic
From the Republic, written when Plato was about fifty, in ten books. It begins with one question — what is justice — and in answering it becomes the plan of a city and then a theory of knowledge. The cave is in the seventh book. This volume takes only the cave: the descent, the turning, the ascent, the return, and that by which one sees. For the man, see the Gospel of Plato. What is set down here runs from his fortieth year to his seventieth; in the fourth chapter he states plainly that he no longer agrees with himself, and does not strike out the older view. Where the Good is spoken of, the Order takes it in the smaller sense: that which makes each thing be what it is, and is not itself among 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. (cf. The Highest Covenant 1.2)
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.