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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: of good takes the place of the social and political virtues. In the eighth
and ninth books (4) the perversions of States and of the individuals who
correspond to them are reviewed in succession; and the nature of pleasure
and the principle of tyranny are further analysed in the individual man.
The tenth book (5) is the conclusion of the whole, in which the relations
of philosophy to poetry are finally determined, and the happiness of the
citizens in this life, which has now been assured, is crowned by the vision
of another.
Or a more general division into two parts may be adopted; the first (Books
I - IV) containing the description of a State framed generally in
accordance with Hellenic notions of religion and morality, while in the
 The Republic |