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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: beginning, middle, and ending. They seem to forget that Plato is a
dramatic writer who throws his thoughts into both sides of the argument,
and certainly does not aim at any unity which is inconsistent with freedom,
and with a natural or even wild manner of treating his subject; also that
his mode of revealing the truth is by lights and shadows, and far-off and
opposing points of view, and not by dogmatic statements or definite
results.
The real difficulties arise out of the extreme subtlety of the work, which,
as Socrates says of the poem of Simonides, is a most perfect piece of art.
There are dramatic contrasts and interests, threads of philosophy broken
and resumed, satirical reflections on mankind, veils thrown over truths
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