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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: that these writings of mine were meant to protect the arguments of
Parmenides against those who make fun of him and seek to show the many
ridiculous and contradictory results which they suppose to follow from the
affirmation of the one. My answer is addressed to the partisans of the
many, whose attack I return with interest by retorting upon them that their
hypothesis of the being of many, if carried out, appears to be still more
ridiculous than the hypothesis of the being of one. Zeal for my master led
me to write the book in the days of my youth, but some one stole the copy;
and therefore I had no choice whether it should be published or not; the
motive, however, of writing, was not the ambition of an elder man, but the
pugnacity of a young one. This you do not seem to see, Socrates; though in
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