[519b]
and becoming, which attaching
themselves to it by food and similar pleasures and gluttonies turn downwards the
vision of the soul1—If, I say,
freed from these, it had suffered a conversion towards the things that are real
and true, that same faculty of the same men would have been most keen in its
vision of the higher things, just as it is for the things toward which it is now
turned.” “It is likely,” he said. “Well,
then,” said I, “is not this also likely2 and
a necessary consequence of what has been said, that neither could men who are
uneducated and inexperienced in truth ever adequately
1 Or “eye of the mind.” Cf. 533 D, Sym. 219 A, Soph. 254 A, Aristot.Eth. 1144 a 30 , and the parallels and imitations collected by Gomperz, Apol. der Heilkunst, 166-167. cf. also What Plato Said, p. 534, on Phaedo 99 E, Ovid, Met. 15.64: “. . . quae natura negabat Visibus humanis, oculis ea pectoris hausit.” Cf. Friedlander, Platon, i. pp. 12-13, 15, and perhaps Odyssey, i. 115, Marc. Aurel. iv. 29καταμύειν τῷ νοερῷ ὄμματι.
2 For likely and necessary cf. on 485 C, p. 6, note c.
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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