Source 101: The following quote was written by Prof. Robert M. Baird; accessed Jul. 2008 at: http://encarta.msn.com/text_761568769___0/Plato.html. This link may or may not still be operational; if it isn't, we may have redirected it to the WayBackMachine archive.

‘Breaking free, one of the individuals escapes from the cave into the light of day. With the aid of the sun [necessarily living free of denial of the glaring, burning, searing truth of Integrative Meaning and the issue it raises of the human condition—and assisted by the understandings that science has found of the differences in the way genes and nerves process information], that person sees for the first time the real world and returns to the cave with the message that the only things they have seen heretofore are shadows and appearances and that the real world awaits them if they are willing to struggle free of their bonds. The shadowy environment of the cave symbolizes for Plato the physical world of appearances. Escape into the sun-filled setting outside the cave symbolizes the transition to the real world, the world of full and perfect being, the world of Forms, which is the proper object of knowledge’

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