This too is a poetic image and may be a comforting one. You yourself said earlier that art is everywhere. Callistos unkindly suggested that you envy the great poets, perhaps you do. Art is a fundamental method of explanation, and this is what Acastos was trying to say to us when he talked so well earlier on. And it is a natural mode of explanation for human beings and one which, in your eloquence, you use yourself. Our home may be elsewhere, but we are condemned to exile, to live here with our fellow exiles. And we have to live with language and with words. You have spoken reverently about what is highest, and whatever belief we hold about the gods we may understand you. You say art consoles us and prevents us from taking the final step. You say art is a last exit or a second best. It may be that human beings can only achieve a second best, that second best is our best. [ Plato is shaking his head .] Perhaps not only art but all our highest speculations, the highest achievements of our spirit are second best. Homer is imperfect. Science is imperfect. Any high thinking of which we are capable is faulty. Not everything connects, my dear Plato. We are not gods. What you call the whole truth is only for them. So our truth must include, must embrace the idea of the second best, that all our thought will be incomplete and all our art tainted by selfishness. This doesn’t mean there is no difference between the good and the bad in what we achieve. And it doesn’t mean not trying. It means trying in a humble modest truthful spirit. This is our truth.

PLATO

You mean we can’t get all the way.

SOCRATES

No.

PLATO

Philosophy can get all the way.

SOCRATES

No.

PLATO

If I thought that I could not imagine wanting to be a philosopher at all.

DEXIMENES

You will never be a philosopher, you are far too emotional.

SOCRATES