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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: when I say that the unjust man is not happy. But, my good friend, where is
the refutation? I cannot admit a word which you have been saying.
POLUS: That is because you will not; for you surely must think as I do.
SOCRATES: Not so, my simple friend, but because you will refute me after
the manner which rhetoricians practise in courts of law. For there the one
party think that they refute the other when they bring forward a number of
witnesses of good repute in proof of their allegations, and their adversary
has only a single one or none at all. But this kind of proof is of no
value where truth is the aim; a man may often be sworn down by a multitude
of false witnesses who have a great air of respectability. And in this
argument nearly every one, Athenian and stranger alike, would be on your
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