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The allegory has a political as well as a philosophical meaning.

The den or cave represents the narrow sphere of politics or law

(compare the description of the philosopher and lawyer in the

Theaetetus), and the light of the eternal ideas is supposed to

exercise a disturbing influence on the minds of those who return

to this lower world. In other words, their principles are too

wide for practical application; they are looking far away into

the past and future, when their business is with the present. The

ideal is not easily reduced to the conditions of actual life, and

may often be at variance with them. And at first, those who

return are unable to compete with the inhabitants of the den in

the measurement of the shadows, and are derided and persecuted by

them; but after a while they see the things below in far truer

proportions than those who have never ascended into the upper

world.