Those who have emerged from the Cave into full daylight amidst eternal Forms, must be forced to come down again and undertake active duties — Their reluctance to do this.
Coming as they do from the better light, they will, after a little temporary perplexity, be able to see the dim shadows better than those who have never looked at anything else. Having contemplated the true and real Forms of the Just, Beautiful, Good — they will better appreciate the images of these Forms which come and go, pass by and repass in the cave.[219] They will indeed be very reluctant to undertake the duties or exercise the powers of government: their genuine delight is in philosophy; and if left to themselves, they would cultivate nothing else. But such reluctance is in itself one proof that they are the fittest persons to govern. If government be placed in the hands of men eager to possess it, there will be others eager to dispossess them, so that competition and factions will arise. Those who come forward to govern, having no good of their own, and seeking to extract their own good from the exercise of power, are both unworthy of trust and sure to be resisted by opponents of the like disposition. The philosopher alone has his own good in himself. He enjoys a life better than that of a ruler; which life he is compelled to forego when he accepts power and becomes a ruler.[220]
[219] Plato, Republic, vii. p. 520 C.
[220] Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 520-521.
Studies serving as introduction to philosophy — Arithmetic, its awakening power — shock to the mind by felt contradiction.
The main purpose of education, I have said (continues Sokrates) is, to turn round the faces of the superior men, and to invite them upwards from darkness to light — from the region of perishable shadows to that of imperishable realities.[221] Now what cognitions, calculated to aid such a purpose, can we find to teach?[222] Gymnastic, music, the vulgar arts, are all useful to be taught: but they do not tend to that which we are here seeking. Arithmetic does so to a certain extent, if properly taught which at present it is not.[223] It furnishes a stimulus to awaken the dormant intellectual and reflective capacity. Among the variety of sensible phenomena, there are some in which the senses yield a clear and satisfactory judgment, leaving no demand in the mind for anything beyond: there are others in which the senses land us in apparent equivocation, puzzle, and contradiction — so that the mind is stung by this apparent perplexity, and instigated to find a solution by some intellectual effort.[224] Thus, if we see or feel the fingers of our hand, they always appear to the sense, fingers: in whatever order or manner they may be looked at, there is no contradiction or discrepancy in the judgment of sense. But if we see or feel them as great or small, thick or thin, hard or soft, &c., they then appear differently according as they are seen or felt in different order or under different circumstances. The same object which now appears great, will at another time appear small: it will seem to the sense hard or soft, light or heavy, according as it is seen under different comparisons and relations.[225] Here then, sense is involved in an apparent contradiction, declaring the same object to be both hard and soft, great and small, light and heavy, &c. The mind, painfully confounded by such a contradiction, is obliged to invoke intellectual reflection to clear it up. Great and small are presented by the sense as inhering in the same object. Are they one thing, or two separate things? Intellectual reflection informs us that they are two: enabling us to conceive separately two things, which to our sense appeared confounded together. Intellectual (or abstract) conception is thus developed in our mind, as distinguished from sense, and as a refuge from the confusion and difficulties of sense, which furnish the stimulus whereby it is awakened.[226]
[221] Plato, Republic, vii. p. 521 C. ψυχῆς περιαγωγή, ἐκ νυκτερινης τινὸς ἡμέρας εἰς ἀληθινὴν τοῦ ὄντος ἰούσης ἐπάνοδον, ἣν δὴ φιλοσοφίαν ἀληθῆ φήσομεν εἶναι.
[222] Plato, Republic, vii. p. 521 C. Τί ἂν οὖν εἴη μάθημα ψυχῆς ὁλκὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ γιγνομένου ἐπὶ τὸ ὄν;
[223] Plato, Republic, vii. pp. 522-523 A.
[224] Plato, Republic, vii. p. 523 C.