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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: Greek antiquity of a series of Epistles, continuous and yet coinciding with
a succession of events extending over a great number of years.
The external probability therefore against them is enormous, and the
internal probability is not less: for they are trivial and unmeaning,
devoid of delicacy and subtlety, wanting in a single fine expression. And
even if this be matter of dispute, there can be no dispute that there are
found in them many plagiarisms, inappropriately borrowed, which is a common
note of forgery. They imitate Plato, who never imitates either himself or
any one else; reminiscences of the Republic and the Laws are continually
recurring in them; they are too like him and also too unlike him, to be
genuine (see especially Karsten, Commentio Critica de Platonis quae
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