most, if not all, the
other senses--you would not say that any of them requires such an
addition?

Certainly not.

But you see that without the addition of some other nature there is no
seeing or being seen?

How do you mean?

Sight being, as I conceive, in the eyes, and he who has eyes wanting to
see; colour being also present in them, still unless there be a third
nature specially adapted to the purpose, the owner of the eyes will see
nothing and the colours will be invisible.

Of what nature are you speaking?

Of that which you term light, I replied.

True, he said.

Noble, then, is the bond which links together sight and visibility, and
great beyond other bonds by no small difference of nature; for light is
their bond, and light is no ignoble thing?

Nay, he said, the reverse of ignoble.

And which, I said, of the gods in heaven would you say was the lord of
this element? Whose is that light which makes the eye to see perfectly
and the visible to appear?

You mean the sun, as you and all mankind say.

May not the relation of sight to this deity be described as follows?

How?

Neither sight nor the eye in which sight resides is the sun?

No.

Yet of all the organs of sense the eye is the most like the sun?

By far the most like.

And the power which the eye possesses is a sort of effluence which is
dispensed from the sun?

Exactly.

Then the sun is not sight, but the author of sight who is recognised by
sight?

True, he said.

And this is he whom I call the child of the good, whom the good begat in
his own likeness, to be in the visible world, in relation to sight
and the things of sight, what the good is in the intellectual world in
relation to mind and the things of mind:

Will you be a little more explicit? he said.

Why, you know, I said, that the eyes, when a person directs them towards
objects on which the light of day is no longer shining, but the moon
and stars only, see dimly, and are nearly blind; they seem to have no
clearness of vision in them?

Very true.

But when they are directed towards objects on which the sun shines, they
see clearly and there is sight in them?

Certainly.

And the soul is like the eye: when resting upon that on which truth and
being shine, the soul perceives and understands, and is radiant with
intelligence; but when turned towards the twilight of becoming and
perishing, then she has opinion only, and goes blinking about, and
is first of