| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: together in the Symposium engaged in friendly intercourse. Nor is there
any trace in the Dialogues of an attempt to make Anytus or Meletus
personally odious in the eyes of the Athenian public.
APOLOGY
by
Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
How you, O Athenians, have been affected by my accusers, I cannot tell; but
I know that they almost made me forget who I was--so persuasively did they
speak; and yet they have hardly uttered a word of truth. But of the many
falsehoods told by them, there was one which quite amazed me;--I mean when
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: the false and selfish called her wise, the vulgar and debased
termed her charitable, the insolent and unjust dubbed her
amiable, the conscientious and benevolent generally at first
accepted as valid her claim to be considered one of themselves;
but ere long the plating of pretension wore off, the real
material appeared below, and they laid her aside as a deception.
CHAPTER XVI.
In the course of another fortnight I had seen sufficient of
Frances Evans Henri, to enable me to form a more definite opinion
of her character. I found her possessed in a somewhat remarkable
degree of at least two good points, viz., perseverance and a
The Professor |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: chance as a factor in the phenomena of life. Chance and miracles,
he says, are mere expressions for our ignorance of rational causes.
The spirit of rationalism which we recognised in Herodotus as a
vague uncertain attitude and which appears in Thucydides as a
consistent attitude of mind never argued about or even explained,
is by Polybius analysed and formulated as the great instrument of
historical research.
Herodotus, while believing on principle in the supernatural, yet
was sceptical at times. Thucydides simply ignored the
supernatural. He did not discuss it, but he annihilated it by
explaining history without it. Polybius enters at length into the
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