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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: of making the most damaging reflections on the Sophist and all his kith and
kin, and to exhibit him in the most discreditable light.
Nor need we seriously consider whether Plato was right in assuming that an
animal so various could not be confined within the limits of a single
definition. In the infancy of logic, men sought only to obtain a
definition of an unknown or uncertain term; the after reflection scarcely
occurred to them that the word might have several senses, which shaded off
into one another, and were not capable of being comprehended in a single
notion. There is no trace of this reflection in Plato. But neither is
there any reason to think, even if the reflection had occurred to him, that
he would have been deterred from carrying on the war with weapons fair or
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