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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: and 'heavy,' or how there can be many members in one body, and the like
wonders. Socrates has long ceased to see any wonder in these phenomena;
his difficulties begin with the application of number to abstract unities
(e.g.'man,' 'good') and with the attempt to divide them. For have these
unities of idea any real existence? How, if imperishable, can they enter
into the world of generation? How, as units, can they be divided and
dispersed among different objects? Or do they exist in their entirety in
each object? These difficulties are but imperfectly answered by Socrates
in what follows.
We speak of a one and many, which is ever flowing in and out of all things,
concerning which a young man often runs wild in his first metaphysical
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