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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: countries. They are presented in the most lively and graphic manner, but
they are never insisted on as true; it is only affirmed that nothing better
can be said about a future life. Plato seems to make use of them when he
has reached the limits of human knowledge; or, to borrow an expression of
his own, when he is standing on the outside of the intellectual world.
They are very simple in style; a few touches bring the picture home to the
mind, and make it present to us. They have also a kind of authority gained
by the employment of sacred and familiar names, just as mere fragments of
the words of Scripture, put together in any form and applied to any
subject, have a power of their own. They are a substitute for poetry and
mythology; and they are also a reform of mythology. The moral of them may
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