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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: had been his hopes and how great his disappointment! For he found that his
new friend was anything but consistent in his use of mind as a cause, and
that he soon introduced winds, waters, and other eccentric notions.
(Compare Arist. Metaph.) It was as if a person had said that Socrates is
sitting here because he is made up of bones and muscles, instead of telling
the true reason--that he is here because the Athenians have thought good to
sentence him to death, and he has thought good to await his sentence. Had
his bones and muscles been left by him to their own ideas of right, they
would long ago have taken themselves off. But surely there is a great
confusion of the cause and condition in all this. And this confusion also
leads people into all sorts of erroneous theories about the position and
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