e four basic elements are mixed in varying proportions to form the matter of this world. These four elements are themselves unchanged--fire, air, water, and earth. He agreed with the atomists that the varieties of sensible objects came from the differences in the shapes and sizes of the particles of which they were composed, but he saw these primary solids as in turn made up of polyhedrons of specific types.
The allegory of the cave demonstrates the state in which we live, a state where our reality is enclosed as it would be by the cave and where we see only the shadows on the cave wall and not the ideal reality that produces those shadows. In the cave, appearance is whit guides thought, for the man chained at the bottom of the cave only knows what he sees, not its source, not its reality, no
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