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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: their cunning, the place of innocence will not receive them after death;
and that here on earth, they will live ever in the likeness of their own
evil selves, and with evil friends--when they hear this they in their
superior cunning will seem to be listening to the talk of idiots.
THEODORUS: Very true, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Too true, my friend, as I well know; there is, however, one
peculiarity in their case: when they begin to reason in private about
their dislike of philosophy, if they have the courage to hear the argument
out, and do not run away, they grow at last strangely discontented with
themselves; their rhetoric fades away, and they become helpless as
children. These however are digressions from which we must now desist, or
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