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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: what was not to be found there? But such a shadowy enquiry is not worth
pursuing further. We need only remember that in the criticism which
follows of the thesis of Protagoras, we are criticizing the Protagoras of
Plato, and not attempting to draw a precise line between his real
sentiments and those which Plato has attributed to him.
2. The other difficulty is a more subtle, and also a more important one,
because bearing on the general character of the Platonic dialogues. On a
first reading of them, we are apt to imagine that the truth is only spoken
by Socrates, who is never guilty of a fallacy himself, and is the great
detector of the errors and fallacies of others. But this natural
presumption is disturbed by the discovery that the Sophists are sometimes
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