I should like to have your agreement in another matter I said. For I
would not have you marvel that those who attain to this beatific
vision are unwilling to descend to human affairs; but their souls are
ever hastening into the upper world in which they desire to dwell; and
this is very natural, if our allegory may be trusted.
Certainly, that is quite natural.
And is there anything surprizing in one who passes from divine
contemplation to human things, misbehaving himself in a ridiculous
manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has become
accustomed to the darkness visible, he is compelled to fight in courts
of law, or in other places, about the images or shadows of images of
justice, and is endeavoring to meet the conceptions of those who have
never yet seen the absolute justice?
There is nothing surprizing in that, he replied.
Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of
the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from
coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of
the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who
remembers this when he sees the soul of any one whose vision is
perplexed and weak will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask
whether that soul has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to
see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness
to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And then he will count the
one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the
other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from
below into the light there will be more reason in this than in the
laugh which greets the other from the den.
That, he said, is a very just remark.
But if this is true, then certain professors of education must be
mistaken in saying that they can put a knowledge into the soul which
was not there before, like giving eyes to the blind.
Yes, that is what they say, he replied.
Whereas, I said, our argument shows that the power is already in the
soul; and that as the eye can not turn from darkness to light without
the whole body, so too, when the eye of the soul is turned round, the
whole soul must be turned from the world of generation into that of
being, and become able to endure the sight of being and of the
brightest and best of being--that is to say, of the good.
Very true.
And this is conversion; and the art will be how to accomplish this as
easily and completely as possible; not implanting eyes, for they exist
already, but giving them a right direction, which they have not.
Yes, he said, that may be assumed.
And hence while the other qualities seem to be akin to the body, being
infused by habit and exercise and not originally innate, the virtue of
wisdom is part of a divine essence, and has a power which is
everlasting, and by this conversion is rendered useful and profitable,
and is also capable of becoming hurtful and useless. Did you never
observe the narrow intelligence flashing from the keen eye of a clever
rogue--how eager he is, how clearly his paltry soul sees the way to
his end; he is the reverse of blind, but his keen sight is taken into
the service of evil, and he is dangerous in proportion to his
intelligence?
Very true, he said.
But what if there had been a circumcision of such natures in the days
of their youth; and they had been severed from the leaden weights, as
I may call them, with which they are born into the world, which lead
on to sensual pleasures, such as those of eating and drinking, and
drag them down and turn the vision of their souls about the things
that are below--if, I say, these natures had been released from these
tendencies and turned round to the truth, the very same faculty in
these very same persons would have seen the other as keenly as they
now see that on which the eye is fixt.
That is very likely.
Yes, I said; and there is another thing which is likely, or rather a
necessary inference from what has proceeded, that neither the
uneducated and uninformed of the truth, nor yet those who never make
an end of their education, will be able ministers of state; not the
former, because they have no single aim of duty which is the rule of
their actions, private as well as public; nor the latter, because they
will not act at all except upon compulsion, fancying that they are
already in the islands of the blest.
Very true, he replied.
Then, I said, the business of us who are the founders of the state
will be to compel the best minds to attain that knowledge which has
been already declared by us to be the greatest of all--to that
eminence they must ascend and arrive at the good, and when they have
ascended and seen enough we must not allow them to do as they do now.
What do you mean?
I mean that they remain in the upper world; but this must not be
allowed; they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the
den, and partake of their labors and honors, whether they are worth
having or not.
But is not this unjust? he said; ought we to give them an inferior
life, when they might have a superior one?
You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of the
legislator; he did not aim at making any one class in the state happy
above the rest; the happiness was to be in the whole state, and he
held the citizens together by persuasion and necessity, making them
benefactors of one another; to this end he created them, not that they
should please themselves, but they were to be his instruments in
binding up the state.
True, he said, I had forgotten that.