We can’t. And yet we can. We can change. You see, love is energy. The soul is a huge vast place, and lots of it is dark, and it’s full of energy and power, and this can be bad, but it can be good, and that’s the work, to change bad energy into good, when we desire good things and are attracted magnetically by them –

ANTAGORAS

I think your magnetic Good isn’t God after all, it’s just sex, all this dark energy is sex.

PLATO

All right, it’s sex, or sex is it – it’s the whole drive of our being and that includes sex.

SOCRATES

Perhaps there is a god there after all. I would call him Eros.

PLATO

Eros! Yes!

SOCRATES

Only your Eros isn’t exactly a god, he’s a holy passionate spirit that seeks for God, what you call Good.

PLATO

Yes! He’s in love with Good!

ANTAGORAS

But your Good is an idea.

SOCRATES

Do sit down, Plato!

PLATO sits

Ideas work in life, they can become incarnate in how we live, that’s how they become real!

ANTAGORAS

These are just attractive metaphors.

PLATO

Metaphors aren’t just ornaments, they’re fundamental modes of knowledge – it’s like – what’s at a higher more difficult level appears to us first as a shadow, or an image – then we break through the image and move on and –

SOCRATES

Like the carpenter learning mathematics. [ Plato nods ] But can we get beyond images and see your Good, which you said was like the sun?

PLATO

I don’t know. In a way, goodness and truth seem to come out of the depths of the soul, and when we really know something we feel we’ve always known it. Yet also it’s terribly distant, farther than any star. We’re sort of – stretched out – It’s like beyond the world, not in the clouds or in heaven, but a light that shows the world, this world, as it really is –

SOCRATES

You want your Good, your source of true light to be separate and pure and perfect –

PLATO

It’s like what Acastos said when in spite of all wickedness, and in all misery, we are certain that there really is goodness and that it matters absolutely.

SOCRATES

But you wouldn’t call it God.

PLATO

No, it’s not a person, we don’t have dialogues with it, it won’t reward us, we must be good for nothing, it’s an idea, it’s the closest thing [ gesture ]–

SOCRATES

And the farthest thing.

ACASTOS

What about prayer? In your picture can we pray?

PLATO

Yes, but not to a person. Learning can be praying, breathing can be praying. Prayer is keeping quiet and hoping for the light.

ANTAGORAS