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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: not, must be superior to the science which is able to persuade?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course.
STRANGER: Very good; and to what science do we assign the power of
persuading a multitude by a pleasing tale and not by teaching?
YOUNG SOCRATES: That power, I think, must clearly be assigned to rhetoric.
STRANGER: And to what science do we give the power of determining whether
we are to employ persuasion or force towards any one, or to refrain
altogether?
YOUNG SOCRATES: To that science which governs the arts of speech and
persuasion.
STRANGER: Which, if I am not mistaken, will be politics?
Statesman | 
