“The universe, then, is less intimation
than cipher: a mask rather than a revelation
in the romantic sense. Does love meet with love?
Do we receive but what we give? The answer is
surely a paradox, the paradox that there are
Platonic universals beyond, but that the glass
is too dark to see them. Is there a light beyond
the glass, or is it a mirror only to the self?
The Platonic cave is even darker than Plato
made it, for it introduces the echo, and so
leaves us back in the world of men, which does
not carry total meaning, is just a story of events.”
than cipher: a mask rather than a revelation
in the romantic sense. Does love meet with love?
Do we receive but what we give? The answer is
surely a paradox, the paradox that there are
Platonic universals beyond, but that the glass
is too dark to see them. Is there a light beyond
the glass, or is it a mirror only to the self?
The Platonic cave is even darker than Plato
made it, for it introduces the echo, and so
leaves us back in the world of men, which does
not carry total meaning, is just a story of events.”
– Betty Jay, reader’s guide to A Passage to India