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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: participation in that which is not, nor semblance of that which is not. If
one is not, the others neither are, nor appear to be one or many, like or
unlike, in contact or separation. In short, if one is not, nothing is.
The result of all which is, that whether one is or is not, one and the
others, in relation to themselves and to one another, are and are not, and
appear to be and appear not to be, in all manner of ways.
I. On the first hypothesis we may remark: first, That one is one is an
identical proposition, from which we might expect that no further
consequences could be deduced. The train of consequences which follows, is
inferred by altering the predicate into 'not many.' Yet, perhaps, if a
strict Eristic had been present, oios aner ei kai nun paren, he might have
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