Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/288

 282 Goebel Kraftigung" in manuscript during his memorable intercourse with Herder at Strassburg. As the analogy between the Faust scene under discussion and Plato's parable has not been pointed out before I shall, for the purpose of convenient comparison, quote the latter in the translation of A. D. Lindsay. 21 "Then after this," I said, ''liken our nature in its education and want of education to a condition which I may thus describe. Picture men in an underground cave-dwelling, with a long entrance reaching up towards the light along the whole width of the cave; in this they lie from their childhood, their legs and necks in chains, so that they stay where they are and look only in front of them, as the chain prevents them turning their heads round. Some way off, and higher up, a fire is burning behind them, and between the fire and the prisoners is a road on higher ground. Imagine a wall built along this road, like the screens which showmen have in front of the audience, over which they show the puppets. " "I have it," he said. "Then picture also men carrying along this wall all kinds of articles which overtop it, statues of men and other creatures in stone and wood and other materials; naturally some of the carriers are speaking, others are silent." "A strange image and strange prisoners," he said. "They are like ourselves," I answered. "For in the first place, do you think that such men would have seen anything of themselves or of each other except the shadows thrown by the fire on the wall of the cave opposite to them?" "How could they," he said, "if all their life they had been forced to keep their heads motionless?" "What would they have seen of the things carried along the wall? Would it not be the same?" "Surely." "Then if they were able to talk with one another, do you think that they would suppose what they saw to be the real things?" ""Necessarily." "Then what if there were in their prison an echo from the opposite wall? When any one of those passing by spoke, do you imagine that they could help thinking that the voice came from the shadow passing before them?" "No, certainly not," he said. "Then most assuredly," I, said, "the only truth that such men would conceive would be the shadows of those manufactured articles?" "That is quite inevitable," he said. "Then consider," I said, "the manner of their release from their bonds and the cure of their folly, supposing that they attained their natural destiny in some such way as this. Let us suppose one of them released, and forced 21 The Republic of Plato. Translated into English by A. D. Lindsay. London, 1908.