sarah spangler's List: Classical Rhetoric

• And if they were in the habit of conferring honors among  themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which  of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and who were  therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you think that he would care  for such honors and glories, or envy the possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer,
• the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of  the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards  to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief,  which, at your desire, I have expressed whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether  true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last  of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the  universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of  light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the  intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in  public or private life must have his eye fixed.
• 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 cave, and  partake of their labors and honors, whether they are worth having or not.
    [Glaucon] But is not this unjust? he said; ought we to give them a worse  life, when they might have a better?
    [Socrates] You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of  the legislator, who 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 the State, and therefore benefactors  of one another; to this end he created them, not to please themselves, but to be his  instruments in binding up the State.
• Wherefore each of you, when his turn comes, must  go down to the general underground abode, and get the habit of seeing in the dark. When  you have acquired the habit, you will see ten thousand times better than the inhabitants  of the cave, and you will know what the several images are, and what they represent,  because you have seen the beautiful and just and good in their truth.
• And the only life which looks down upon the life of political  ambition is that of true philosophy. Do you know of any other?

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