ny, which must be studied in a purely
abstract way, first by the method of problems, and secondly as a part of
universal knowledge in relation to the idea of good.

The allegory has a political as well as a philosophical meaning. The
den or cave represents the narrow sphere of politics or law (compare the
description of the philosopher and lawyer in the Theaetetus), and
the light of the eternal ideas is supposed to exercise a disturbing
influence on the minds of those who return to this lower world. In other
words, their principles are too wide for practical application; they are
looking far away into the past and future, when their business is with
the present. The ideal is not easily reduced to the conditions of actual
life, and may often be at variance with them. And at first, those who
return are unable to compete with the inhabitants of the den in the
measurement of the shadows, and are derided and persecuted by them; but
after a while they see the things below in far truer proportions than
those who have never ascended into the upper world. The difference
between the politician turned into a philosopher and the philosopher
turned into a politician, is symbolized by the two kinds of disordered
eyesight, the one which is experienced by the captive who is transferred
from darkness to day, the other, of the heavenly messenger who
voluntarily for the good of his fellow-men descends into the den. In
what way the brighter light is to dawn on the inhabitants of the lower
world, or how the idea of good is to become the guiding principle of
politics, is left unexplained by Plato. Like the nature and divisions of
dialectic, of which Glaucon impatiently demands to be informed, perhaps
he would have said that the explanation could not be given except to a
disciple of the previous sciences. (Symposium.)

Many illustrations of this part of the Republic may be found in modern
Politics and in daily life. For among ourselves, too, there have
been two sorts of Politicians or Statesmen, whose eyesight has become
disordered in two different ways. First, there have been great men who,
in the language of Burke, 'have been too much given to general
maxims,' who, like J.S. Mill or Burke himself, have been theorists or
philosophers before they were politicians, or who, having been students
of history, have allowed some great historical parallel, such as the
English Revolution of 1688, or possibly Athenian democracy or Roman
Imperialism, t