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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: and I hope that you will communicate to me in return anything better which
you may have.
HERMOGENES: Fear not; I will do my best.
SOCRATES: In the first place, the letter rho appears to me to be the
general instrument expressing all motion (kinesis). But I have not yet
explained the meaning of this latter word, which is just iesis (going); for
the letter eta was not in use among the ancients, who only employed
epsilon; and the root is kiein, which is a foreign form, the same as ienai.
And the old word kinesis will be correctly given as iesis in corresponding
modern letters. Assuming this foreign root kiein, and allowing for the
change of the eta and the insertion of the nu, we have kinesis, which
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