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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: SOCRATES: That you contract, Polus, the prolixity of speech in which you
indulged at first.
POLUS: What! do you mean that I may not use as many words as I please?
SOCRATES: Only to think, my friend, that having come on a visit to Athens,
which is the most free-spoken state in Hellas, you when you got there, and
you alone, should be deprived of the power of speech--that would be hard
indeed. But then consider my case:--shall not I be very hardly used, if,
when you are making a long oration, and refusing to answer what you are
asked, I am compelled to stay and listen to you, and may not go away? I
say rather, if you have a real interest in the argument, or, to repeat my
former expression, have any desire to set it on its legs, take back any
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