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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: we can make an order which, with a little exaggeration or disproportion in
some of the parts, will cover the whole field of philosophy. But are we
therefore justified in saying that ideas are the causes of the great
movement of the world rather than the personalities which conceived them?
The great man is the expression of his time, and there may be peculiar
difficulties in his age which he cannot overcome. He may be out of harmony
with his circumstances, too early or too late, and then all his thoughts
perish; his genius passes away unknown. But not therefore is he to be
regarded as a mere waif or stray in human history, any more than he is the
mere creature or expression of the age in which he lives. His ideas are
inseparable from himself, and would have been nothing without him. Through
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