| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: think that two men are better than one, or that your slaves are better than
you because they are stronger? Then please to begin again, and tell me who
the better are, if they are not the stronger; and I will ask you, great
Sir, to be a little milder in your instructions, or I shall have to run
away from you.
CALLICLES: You are ironical.
SOCRATES: No, by the hero Zethus, Callicles, by whose aid you were just
now saying many ironical things against me, I am not:--tell me, then, whom
you mean, by the better?
CALLICLES: I mean the more excellent.
SOCRATES: Do you not see that you are yourself using words which have no
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: the laws at home.
[12] Reading, {tous ek ton polemion nekrous}, after Weiske.
It was after this[13] that his attention was drawn to the men of
Argos. They had appropriated Corinth, and were reaping the fruits of
their fields at home. The war to them was a merry jest. Accordingly he
marched against them; and having ravaged their territory throughout,
he crossed over by the pass[14] down upon Corinth and captured the
long walls leading to Lechaeum. And so having thrown open the gates of
Peloponnese he returned home in time for the Hyacinthia,[15] where, in
the post assigned to him by the master of the chorus, he shared in the
performance of the paean in honour of the god.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: And after all your pully-hauly
Your proceeds look uncommon small-ly.
You had done better here to tarry
Apprentice to the Apothecary.
The silent pirates of the shore
Eat and sleep soft, and pocket more
Than any red, robustious ranger
Who picks his farthings hot from danger.
You clank your guineas on the board;
Mine are with several bankers stored.
You reckon riches on your digits,
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