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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: speak of alternation only. Whether they are right or not, who can say?
But one thing we can say--that they went on their way without much caring
whether we understood them or not. For tell me, Theaetetus, do you
understand what they mean by their assertion of unity, or by their
combinations and separations of two or more principles? I used to think,
when I was young, that I knew all about not-being, and now I am in great
difficulties even about being.
Let us proceed first to the examination of being. Turning to the dualist
philosophers, we say to them: Is being a third element besides hot and
cold? or do you identify one or both of the two elements with being? At
any rate, you can hardly avoid resolving them into one. Let us next
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