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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: confer upon you, my youth. Whereas the attachment of the non-lover, which
is alloyed with a worldly prudence and has worldly and niggardly ways of
doling out benefits, will breed in your soul those vulgar qualities which
the populace applaud, will send you bowling round the earth during a period
of nine thousand years, and leave you a fool in the world below.
And thus, dear Eros, I have made and paid my recantation, as well and as
fairly as I could; more especially in the matter of the poetical figures
which I was compelled to use, because Phaedrus would have them. And now
forgive the past and accept the present, and be gracious and merciful to
me, and do not in thine anger deprive me of sight, or take from me the art
of love which thou hast given me, but grant that I may be yet more esteemed
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