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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: the exception of the Laws. We have in it therefore the last development of
his philosophy. The extreme and one-sided doctrines of the Cynics and
Cyrenaics are included in a larger whole; the relations of pleasure and
knowledge to each other and to the good are authoritatively determined; the
Eleatic Being and the Heraclitean Flux no longer divide the empire of
thought; the Mind of Anaxagoras has become the Mind of God and of the
World. The great distinction between pure and applied science for the
first time has a place in philosophy; the natural claim of dialectic to be
the Queen of the Sciences is once more affirmed. This latter is the bond
of union which pervades the whole or nearly the whole of the Platonic
writings. And here as in several other dialogues (Phaedrus, Republic,
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