By god, Socrates, Glaucon said, don’t desert us with the end almost in sight. We’ll be satisfied if you discuss the good as you discussed justice, moderation, and the rest. That, my friend, I said, would satisfy me too, but I’m afraid that I won’t be up to it and that I’ll disgrace myself and look ridiculous by trying. So let’s abandon the quest for what the good itself is for the time being, for even to arrive at my own view about it is too big a topic for the discussion we are now started on. But I am willing to tell you about what is apparently an offspring of the good and most like it. Is that agreeable to you, or would you rather we let the whole matter drop? It is. The story about the father remains a debt you’ll pay another time. I wish that I could pay the debt in full, and you receive it instead of just the interest. So here, then, is this child and offspring of the good. But be careful that I don’t somehow deceive you unintentionally by giving you an illegitimate account of the child. We’ll be as careful as possible, so speak on. I will when we’ve come to an agreement and recalled some things that we’ve already said both here and many other times. Which ones? We say that there are many beautiful things and many good things, and so on for each kind, and in this way we distinguish them in words. We do. And beauty itself and good itself and all the things that we thereby set down as many, reversing ourselves, we set down according to a single form of each, believing that there is but one, and call it “the being” of each. That’s true. And we say that the many beautiful things and the rest are visible but not intelligible, while the forms are intelligible but not visible. That’s completely true. With what part of ourselves do we see visible things? With our sight. And so audible things are heard by hearing, and with our other senses we perceive all the other perceptible things. That’s right. Have you considered how lavish the maker of our senses was in making the power to see and be seen? I can’t say I have. Well, consider it this way. Do hearing and sound need another kind of thing in order for the former to hear and the latter to be heard, a third thing in whose absence the one won’t hear or the other be heard? No, they need nothing else. And if there are any others that need such a thing, there can’t be many of them. Can you think of one? I can’t. You don’t realize that sight and the visible have such a need? How so? Sight may be present in the eyes, and the one who has it may try to use it, and colors may be present in things, but unless a third kind of thing is present, which is naturally adapted for this very purpose, you know that sight will see nothing, and the colors will remain unseen. What kind of thing do you mean? I mean what you call light. You’re right. Then it isn’t an insignificant kind of link that connects the sense of sight and the power to be seen—it is a more valuable link than any other linked things have got, if indeed light is something valuable. And, of course, it’s very valuable. Which of the gods in heaven would you name as the cause and controller of this, the one whose light causes our sight to see in the best way and the visible things to be seen? The same one you and others would name. Obviously, the answer to your question is the sun. And isn’t sight by nature related to that god in this way? Which way? Sight isn’t the sun, neither sight itself nor that in which it comes to be, namely, the eye. No, it certainly isn’t. But I think that it is the most sunlike of the senses. Very much so. And it receives from the sun the power it has, just like an influx from an overflowing treasury. Certainly. The sun is not sight, but isn’t it the cause of sight itself and seen by it? That’s right. Let’s say, then, that this is what I called the offspring of the good, which the good begot as its analogue. What the good itself is in the intelligible realm, in relation to understanding and intelligible things, the sun is in the visible realm, in relation to sight and visible things.
How? Explain a bit more. You know that, when we turn our eyes to things whose colors are no longer in the light of day but in the gloom of night, the eyes are dimmed and seem nearly blind, as if clear vision were no longer in them. Of course. Yet whenever one turns them on things illuminated by the sun, they see clearly, and vision appears in those very same eyes? d Indeed. Well, understand the soul in the same way: When it focuses on something illuminated by truth and what is, it understands, knows, and apparently possesses understanding, but when it focuses on what is mixed with obscurity, on what comes to be and passes away, it opines and is dimmed, changes its opinions this way and that, and seems bereft of understanding. It does seem that way. So that what gives truth to the things known and the power to know to the knower is the form of the good. And though it is the cause of e knowledge and truth, it is also an object of knowledge. Both knowledge and truth are beautiful things, but the good is other and more beautiful than they. In the visible realm, light and sight are rightly considered sunlike, but it is wrong to think that they are the sun, so here it is right to think of knowledge and truth as goodlike but wrong to think that either of them is the good—for the good is yet more prized.This is an inconceivably beautiful thing you’re talking about, if it provides both knowledge and truth and is superior to them in beauty. You surely don’t think that a thing like that could be pleasure.
) Apparently this group thinks Newton was the greatest man who ever lived.
