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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: countenances when I am speaking: and I am obliged to give my very best
attention to them; for if I make them cry I myself shall laugh, and if I
make them laugh I myself shall cry when the time of payment arrives.
SOCRATES: Do you know that the spectator is the last of the rings which,
as I am saying, receive the power of the original magnet from one another?
The rhapsode like yourself and the actor are intermediate links, and the
poet himself is the first of them. Through all these the God sways the
souls of men in any direction which he pleases, and makes one man hang down
from another. Thus there is a vast chain of dancers and masters and under-
masters of choruses, who are suspended, as if from the stone, at the side
of the rings which hang down from the Muse. And every poet has some Muse
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