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415 THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE 415

rogue — how eager he is, how clearly his paltry soul sees the way to his end ; he is the reverse of blind, but his keen eyesight is forced into the service of evil, and he is mischievous in proportion to his clev- erness?

Very true, he said.

But what if there had been a circumcision of siacb natures in the days of their youth ; and they had been severed from those sensual pleasures, such as eating and drinking, which, like leaden weights, were attached to them at their birth, ^ and which drag them down and turn the vision of their souls upon the things that are below — if, I say, they had been re- leased from these impediments and turned in the opposite direction, the very same faculty in them would have seen the truth as keenly as they see what their eyes are turned to now.

Very likely.

Yes, I said ; and there is another thing which is likely, or rather a necessary inference from what has preceded, — that neither the uneducated and unin- formed of the truth, nor yet those who never make an end of their education, will be able ministers of State ; not the former, because they have no single aim of duty which is the rule of all their actions, private as well as public ; nor the latter, because they will not act at all except upon compulsion, fancying that they are already dwelling apart in the islands of the blest.

Very true, he replied.

1 Plato means : " If the soul should be freed from the tendencies to the world oi change (the world of 'becoming') which have become attached to the soul by the pleasures of eating and drinking, and hold it down like leaden weights,' ' etc.