Midwifery
One of the most often recurring pieces of imagery in the text is that of midwifery. Midwives were—and are, though to a far lesser extent—the woman who was charged with bringing new life into the world through assisting with the labor of a present woman on the bring of delivery. The first occurrence is actually literal: Socrates insults a “simpleton” for his apparent ignorance in not knowing his mother worked as a midwife. Things begin getting more ambiguously figurative immediately as Socrates goes on to add that he himself is a practicing midwife. He will shortly explain in one of the longest speeches of the opening section that the midwifery hie practices is, indeed, metaphorical in the sense of assisting in the delivery of truth and wisdom.
Motion
Imagery related to the concept of motion is of essential significance to the arguments being presented and debated in the work. Motion is presented as being the foundation of all being. But this idea is not limited merely to physical activity. Motion can also take place and contribute to being even when, paradoxically, one is physically in a relative state of stasis:
“And is not the bodily habit spoiled by rest and idleness, but preserved for a long time by motion and exercise?...And what of the mental habit? Is not the soul informed, and improved, and preserved by study and attention, which are motions; but when at rest, which in the soul only means want of attention and study, is uninformed, and speedily forgets whatever she has learned?”
A Birdhouse in Your…Mind
Rather than the soul being the repository of a birdhouse, Socrates offers imagery in which the mind is an aviary. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the birds flapping their wings around inside that aviary represent the full spectrum of knowledge which can be apprehended:
“…let us now suppose that in the mind of each man there is an aviary of all sorts of birds—some flocking together apart from the rest, others in small groups, others solitary, flying anywhere and everywhere. We may suppose that the birds are kinds of knowledge, and that when we were children, this receptacle was empty; whenever a man has gotten and detained in the enclosure a kind of knowledge, he may be said to have learned or discovered the thing which is the subject of the knowledge: and this is to know.”
The Agents of Perception
Perception is a thing dependent upon synergy. Nothing can be perceived without there being an entity capable of perceiving it and, likewise, perception is not possible without the thing itself. The eye cannot see what is not there and what is there can take no form if nothing is there to sense that form. Imagery of the agency of whiteness is used to put across this concept:
“When the eye and the appropriate object meet together and give birth to whiteness and the sensation connatural with it, which could not have been given by either of them going elsewhere, then, while the sight: is flowing from the eye, whiteness proceeds from the object which combines in producing the color; and so the eye is fulfilled with sight, and really sees, and becomes, not sight, but a seeing eye; and the object which combined to form the color is fulfilled with whiteness, and becomes not whiteness but a white thing, whether wood or stone or whatever the object may be which happens to be colored white.”
