1 Plato 3 · 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.
3.1The man is dragged upward. The way is steep, and it is stone.
3.2He fights the whole way, because he knows nothing of the place he is being taken to.
3.3At the mouth of the cave the daylight falls on him, and he can see nothing at all.
3.4Some suppose that a man who comes out sees everything at once. He does not.
3.5The first thing he can look at is shadows — shadows on the ground, shadows in the water.
3.6Then reflections in water.
3.7Then the things themselves.
3.8Then, at night, the stars and the moon.
3.9And last, long afterward, the sun.
3.10Look at that order. The first thing he sees outside is still a shadow.
3.11The man who has come out and the man still inside are looking, at the start, at the very same thing.
3.12There is one difference only: one of them knows it is a shadow, and the other does not.
3.13Glaucon, most men think that coming out means being given new eyes. It does not. It means being given new knowing.