[516b]
of the stars and
the moon, than by day the sun and the sun's light.1” “Of course.”
“And so, finally, I suppose, he would be able to look upon the sun
itself and see its true nature, not by reflections in water or phantasms of it
in an alien setting,2 but in and by itself in its own place.”
“Necessarily,” he said. “And at this point he
would infer and conclude that this it is that provides the seasons and the
courses of the year and presides over all things in the visible region,
1 It is probably a mistake to look for a definite symbolism in all the details of this description. There are more stages of progress than the proportion of four things calls for. all that Plato's thought requires is the general contrast between an unreal and a real world, and the goal of the rise from one to the other in the contemplation of the sun, or the idea of good, Cf. 517 B-C.
2 i.e. a foreign medium.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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