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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: and go and admonish him; but when honesty is in question, or some other
political virtue, even if they know that he is dishonest, yet, if the man
comes publicly forward and tells the truth about his dishonesty, then, what
in the other case was held by them to be good sense, they now deem to be
madness. They say that all men ought to profess honesty whether they are
honest or not, and that a man is out of his mind who says anything else.
Their notion is, that a man must have some degree of honesty; and that if
he has none at all he ought not to be in the world.
I have been showing that they are right in admitting every man as a
counsellor about this sort of virtue, as they are of opinion that every man
is a partaker of it. And I will now endeavour to show further that they do
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