It is useful and probably necessary at this juncture that we compare the diagrams of the Divided Line (in the preceding analysis) and the Allegory of the Cave, following.
As the prisoner ascends from the Cave and emerges into the World of Day, allegorically his levels of intellect improve as his ascension progresses. Intellectually, the developing thinker moves from the level of imagining, upward to common-sense belief, thence to thinking, thence to the summit of Dialectic, also termed intelligence or knowledge. (Refer to the conversation about the levels of intellect in the preceding analysis.)
Plato seems to believe that all levels of intellect are somehow connected, not disparate; the person who achieves Dialectic has already subsumed the other levels in his progress. For example, the prisoner whom we help ascend from the Cave originally imagines that the shadows on the wall are "real things"; when he is permitted to perceive walkway, fire, people, and objects carried, he perceives the shadows as shadows of real things. He has learned something "new," but it is a learning predicated upon a previous assumption.
