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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: whenever the ranks are broken and you have to fight singly, either in
pursuit, when you are attacking some one who is defending himself, or in
flight, when you have to defend yourself against an assailant. Certainly
he who possessed the art could not meet with any harm at the hands of a
single person, or perhaps of several; and in any case he would have a great
advantage. Further, this sort of skill inclines a man to the love of other
noble lessons; for every man who has learned how to fight in armour will
desire to learn the proper arrangement of an army, which is the sequel of
the lesson: and when he has learned this, and his ambition is once fired,
he will go on to learn the complete art of the general. There is no
difficulty in seeing that the knowledge and practice of other military arts
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