| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: sense of the beauties of an author, and very little light is thrown by him
on real difficulties. He interprets past ages by his own. The greatest
classical writers are the least appreciated by him. This seems to be the
reason why so many of them have perished, why the lyric poets have almost
wholly disappeared; why, out of the eighty or ninety tragedies of Aeschylus
and Sophocles, only seven of each had been preserved.
Such an age of sciolism and scholasticism may possibly once more get the
better of the literary world. There are those who prophesy that the signs
of such a day are again appearing among us, and that at the end of the
present century no writer of the first class will be still alive. They
think that the Muse of Literature may transfer herself to other countries
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: sake of which gold and all our other possessions are acquired by us. Am I
not right?
Yes, certainly.
And may not the same be said of the friend? That which is only dear to us
for the sake of something else is improperly said to be dear, but the truly
dear is that in which all these so-called dear friendships terminate.
That, he said, appears to be true.
And the truly dear or ultimate principle of friendship is not for the sake
of any other or further dear.
True.
Then we have done with the notion that friendship has any further object.
Lysis |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: a considerable share of mathematics, which he first studied
with a view to astrology, that he afterwards laught at it.
He also became surveyor-general.
William Maugridge, a joiner, a most exquisite mechanic, and a solid,
sensible man.
Hugh Meredith, Stephen Potts, and George Webb I have characteriz'd before.
Robert Grace, a young gentleman of some fortune, generous, lively,
and witty; a lover of punning and of his friends.
And William Coleman, then a merchant's clerk, about my age, who had
the coolest, dearest head, the best heart, and the exactest morals
of almost any man I ever met with. He became afterwards a merchant
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
