When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world…..And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream…….It’s all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?”
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“Of course, Daughter of Eve,” said the Faun. “The farther up and the farther in you go, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside.”
Lucy looked hard at the garden and saw that it was not really a garden at all, but a whole world, with its own rivers and woods and sea and mountains. But they were not strange: she knew them all.
“I see,” she said. “This is still Narnia, and more real and more beautiful than the Narnia down below…I see….world within world, Narnia within Narnia…”
“Yes,” said Mr Tumnus, “like an onion: except that as you go in and in, each circle is larger than the last.”
C.S. Lewis – The Last Battle; Chapter 16: Farewell to Shadowlands
Presumably, I said, those who love hearing things and seeing things delight in beautiful sounds and colours and shapes and everything that is fashioned from these, but their mind is unable to behold the nature of beauty itself and to delight in that.
Yes, he said, that is certainly the case.
On the other hand, wouldn’t those who can have recourse to beauty itself and behold it just by itself be quite rare?
Very much so.
Now do you think that a person is awake or living in a dream if he recognises beautiful objects but does not recognise beauty itself, and cannot follow someone else if he leads him to the knowledge of this? Think about this. Isn’t dreaming an activity in which someone, either in sleep or whilst awake, thinks that a likeness is not a likeness but is itself the very object which the likeness resembles?
Yes I am inclined to say that a person like that is dreaming, he said.
Well then, what about someone who, by contrast, thinks that there is a beauty itself, and is able to behold it and whatever partakes of it, without thinking that what partakes is beauty itself or beauty itself is what partakes, do you think this person is awake or living in a dream?
He is very much awake, he said.
Wouldn’t we be right to refer to the mental condition of this man as knowledge because he knows, and to the mental condition of the other as opinion because he is forming opinions.
Yes certainly.
οἱ μέν που, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ, φιλήκοοι καὶ φιλοθεάμονες τάς τε καλὰς φωνὰς ἀσπάζονται καὶ χρόας καὶ σχήματα καὶ πάντα τὰ ἐκ τῶν τοιούτων δημιουργούμενα, αὐτοῦ δὲ τοῦ καλοῦ ἀδύνατος αὐτῶν ἡ διάνοια τὴν φύσιν ἰδεῖν τε καὶ ἀσπάσασθαι.
ἔχει γὰρ οὖν δή, ἔφη, οὕτως.
οἱ δὲ δὴ ἐπ᾽ αὐτὸ τὸ καλὸν δυνατοὶ ἰέναι τε καὶ ὁρᾶν καθ᾽ αὑτὸ ἆρα οὐ σπάνιοι ἂν εἶεν;
καὶ μάλα.
ὁ οὖν καλὰ μὲν πράγματα νομίζων, αὐτὸ δὲ κάλλος μήτε νομίζων μήτε, ἄν τις ἡγῆται ἐπὶ τὴν γνῶσιν αὐτοῦ, δυνάμενος ἕπεσθαι, ὄναρ ἢ ὕπαρ δοκεῖ σοι ζῆν; σκόπει δέ. τὸ ὀνειρώττειν ἆρα οὐ τόδε ἐστίν, ἐάντε ἐν ὕπνῳ τις ἐάντ᾽ ἐγρηγορὼς τὸ ὅμοιόν τῳ μὴ ὅμοιον ἀλλ᾽ αὐτὸ ἡγῆται εἶναι ᾧ ἔοικεν;
ἐγὼ γοῦν ἄν, ἦ δ᾽ ὅς, φαίην ὀνειρώττειν τὸν τοιοῦτον.
τί δέ; ὁ τἀναντία τούτων ἡγούμενός τέ τι αὐτὸ καλὸν
καὶ δυνάμενος καθορᾶν καὶ αὐτὸ καὶ τὰ ἐκείνου μετέχοντα, καὶ οὔτε τὰ μετέχοντα αὐτὸ οὔτε αὐτὸ τὰ μετέχοντα ἡγούμενος, ὕπαρ ἢ ὄναρ αὖ καὶ οὗτος δοκεῖ σοι ζῆν;
καὶ μάλα, ἔφη, ὕπαρ.
οὐκοῦν τούτου μὲν τὴν διάνοιαν ὡς γιγνώσκοντος γνώμην ἂν ὀρθῶς φαῖμεν εἶναι, τοῦ δὲ δόξαν ὡς δοξάζοντος;
πάνυ μὲν οὖν. Text from Perseus Digital Library
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