The "Myth of The Cave", written by Plato had a very profound impact on the world, philosophically speaking. The "Myth of the Cave" is the story of a group of people that were put in a cave and were made to live there all of their lives. Their backs were to the entrance of the cave and they were tied down in a manner that they could not turn around to see anything. They were placed lower in the cave and high above them was a fire and a quarry where men worked all day, the fire projected the shadows of whatever was about them onto the wall in front of the cave dwellers. This was all they knew their entire life time and this was all they were meant to know, but on man broke loose and found the real world. He found out that there was much more to life than shadows and he was overwhelmed by the beauty of everything. He was so overwhelmed that he wanted to share this beauty with the other cave dwellers. None of them believe a word that he said and he was killed because of his silly notions. Plato had two things in mind when writing this story and those two things were; The World of Senses and The World of Ideas.
Plato puts the world into two categories, The World of Senses and The World of Ideas. The World of Ideas illustrates how things can be called by the same name. It is because they all have something in common. He called this common factor the thing's form or idea. Plato insisted that the forms differ greatly from the ordinary things that we see around us. Ordinary things change but their forms do not. One good example is the horse. The philosopher asked Sohie how all horses were alike and it is because they all share some characteristic that enables them to be identified as a horse. Horses can be altered in shape, but their forms can never change.
The second "world" that Plato speaks of is The World of Senses. The world of senses would state that things can be known not only by the intellect but also by the senses.