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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: easily seen to be the author of the definition which he has so great an
interest in maintaining. The preceding definition, 'Temperance is doing
one's own business,' is assumed to have been borrowed by Charmides from
another; and when the enquiry becomes more abstract he is superseded by
Critias (Theaet.; Euthyd.). Socrates preserves his accustomed irony to the
end; he is in the neighbourhood of several great truths, which he views in
various lights, but always either by bringing them to the test of common
sense, or by demanding too great exactness in the use of words, turns aside
from them and comes at last to no conclusion.
The definitions of temperance proceed in regular order from the popular to
the philosophical. The first two are simple enough and partially true,
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