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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: you can know only by seeing them, and not in any other way, and when thus
judging of them from report they attain a true opinion about them, they
judge without knowledge, and yet are rightly persuaded, if they have judged
well.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And yet, O my friend, if true opinion in law courts and
knowledge are the same, the perfect judge could not have judged rightly
without knowledge; and therefore I must infer that they are not the same.
THEAETETUS: That is a distinction, Socrates, which I have heard made by
some one else, but I had forgotten it. He said that true opinion, combined
with reason, was knowledge, but that the opinion which had no reason was
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