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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: connexion between them is really inseparable; for if we attempt to separate
them they become devoid of content and therefore indistinguishable; there
is no difference between the idea of which nothing can be predicated, and
the chaos or matter which has no perceptible qualities--between Being in
the abstract and Nothing. Yet we are frequently told that the one class of
them is the reality and the other appearance; and one is often spoken of as
the double or reflection of the other. For Plato never clearly saw that
both elements had an equal place in mind and in nature; and hence,
especially when we argue from isolated passages in his writings, or attempt
to draw what appear to us to be the natural inferences from them, we are
full of perplexity. There is a similar confusion about necessity and free-
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