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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: in a different manner, and are not supposed to be recovered from a former
state of existence. The metaphysical conception of truth passes into a
psychological one, which is continued in the Laws, and is the final form of
the Platonic philosophy, so far as can be gathered from his own writings
(see especially Laws). In the Laws he harps once more on the old string,
and returns to general notions:--these he acknowledges to be many, and yet
he insists that they are also one. The guardian must be made to recognize
the truth, for which he has contended long ago in the Protagoras, that the
virtues are four, but they are also in some sense one (Laws; compare
Protagoras).
So various, and if regarded on the surface only, inconsistent, are the
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