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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: more able after than before they had learned, and I should assent. And
when I had admitted this, you might use my admissions in such a way as to
prove that upon my view wisdom is strength; whereas in that case I should
not have admitted, any more than in the other, that the able are strong,
although I have admitted that the strong are able. For there is a
difference between ability and strength; the former is given by knowledge
as well as by madness or rage, but strength comes from nature and a healthy
state of the body. And in like manner I say of confidence and courage,
that they are not the same; and I argue that the courageous are confident,
but not all the confident courageous. For confidence may be given to men
by art, and also, like ability, by madness and rage; but courage comes to
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