even think of ascending any more or try to release another and lead him up. I will not discuss the metaphysical implications of this parable about which there is dispute. Plato says we shall not misapprehend him if we interpret this upward journey as education. Whoever would face the light must turn his back on the crowd and its shadows. He must climb into another world of values. The educated man thinks differently. His beliefs are different from those of the herd. He is being set free from its delusions, even from what it holds to be important. This is not because he wishes to be aloof or superior, but because he is gaining a different conception of what believing itself is. He has a new approach to things in general, new habits of judging. He is beginning to form his own judgments, and to judge is to weigh, to consider, to question, to seek evidence, to doubt. Common men cherish their naïve faiths and ask no questions. They imagine that education is simply greater information of the same sort which they also possess in some measure, and that it is the part of wisdom to establish the reality of their shadows. They resent a wisdom which is different from their own and unsettles belief. He who acquires information without the will to doubt is a common man and his kind understand him. Hence men tend to display their information and conceal their education. However much a man may know, so long as he does not become _re-oriented_, the crowd does not suspect him, but admires his learning. He is like a former Mayor of New York in his high hat at the head of the Policeman’s Parade. The multitude used to stand with their mouths open gazing at him. Each in imagination saw in the exalted figure himself risen to a place of honor and success. So it is with the “brainy man.” The “lightening calculator” or the man who can recite from memory the population statistics of the cities of the United States is a museum wonder. But when it was announced in a New York theater that only twelve men could understand Einstein’s theory of relativity, I am told that the crowd hissed.