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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: certainly the work of his declining years, and some portions of them at any
rate seem to have been written in extreme old age.
(2) The Republic is full of hope and aspiration: the Laws bear the stamp
of failure and disappointment. The one is a finished work which received
the last touches of the author: the other is imperfectly executed, and
apparently unfinished. The one has the grace and beauty of youth: the
other has lost the poetical form, but has more of the severity and
knowledge of life which is characteristic of old age.
(3) The most conspicuous defect of the Laws is the failure of dramatic
power, whereas the Republic is full of striking contrasts of ideas and
oppositions of character.
The Republic | 
