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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: argue that the ideas are not within the range of human knowledge; and you
cannot disprove the assertion without a long and laborious demonstration,
which he may be unable or unwilling to follow. In the first place, neither
you nor any one who maintains the existence of absolute ideas will affirm
that they are subjective.' 'That would be a contradiction.' 'True; and
therefore any relation in these ideas is a relation which concerns
themselves only; and the objects which are named after them, are relative
to one another only, and have nothing to do with the ideas themselves.'
'How do you mean?' said Socrates. 'I may illustrate my meaning in this
way: one of us has a slave; and the idea of a slave in the abstract is
relative to the idea of a master in the abstract; this correspondence of
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