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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: a city better? 'When there is unanimity, such as exists between husband
and wife.' Then, when husbands and wives perform their own special duties,
there can be no unanimity between them; nor can a city be well ordered when
each citizen does his own work only. Alcibiades, having stated first that
goodness consists in the unanimity of the citizens, and then in each of
them doing his own separate work, is brought to the required point of self-
contradiction, leading him to confess his own ignorance.
But he is not too old to learn, and may still arrive at the truth, if he is
willing to be cross-examined by Socrates. He must know himself; that is to
say, not his body, or the things of the body, but his mind, or truer self.
The physician knows the body, and the tradesman knows his own business, but
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