Imagine an underground chamber like a cave, with a long entrance as wide as the cave and open to the daylight. In the cave are men who have been prisoners all their lives. Indeed, their feet and necks have been chained so that they cannot turn their heads. They can only look straight ahead. At some distance behind them burns a fire--the source of light--but between the entrance to the cave and the source of light is a screen. Thus, for the prisoners in the cave, every object, even their own bodies, appears only as shadows thrown by the fire on the wall opposite them. It is clear that for such prisoners the shadows become the whole truth until some of them are somehow able to escape from the cave and see the sun which endows with visibility all objects of sight. (Plato(5))
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{K:49168} 4/10/2005
