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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: light does it throw on the character of the entire book in which they
occur! We can hardly escape from the conclusion that they are not
statements of Aristotle respecting Plato, but of a later generation of
Aristotelians respecting a later generation of Platonists. (Compare the
striking remark of the great Scaliger respecting the Magna Moralia:--Haec
non sunt Aristotelis, tamen utitur auctor Aristotelis nomine tanquam suo.)
(2) There is no hint in Plato's own writings that he was conscious of
having made any change in the Doctrine of Ideas such as Dr. Jackson
attributes to him, although in the Republic the platonic Socrates speaks of
'a longer and a shorter way', and of a way in which his disciple Glaucon
'will be unable to follow him'; also of a way of Ideas, to which he still
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