| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: impressed with the truth and reality of what he had heard; and,
after a considerable pause regretted, with much appearance of
sincerity, that his early friend should in his house have
suffered so severely.
"I am the more sorry for your pain, my dear Browne," he
continued, "that it is the unhappy, though most unexpected,
result of an experiment of my own. You must know that, for my
father and grandfather's time, at least, the apartment which was
assigned to you last night had been shut on account of reports
that it was disturbed by supernatural sights and noises. When I
came, a few weeks since, into possession of the estate, I thought
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: respecting the style of conversation which he should address to his
beloved.
After the return of Menexenus, Socrates, at the request of Lysis, asks him
a new question: 'What is friendship? You, Menexenus, who have a friend
already, can tell me, who am always longing to find one, what is the secret
of this great blessing.'
When one man loves another, which is the friend--he who loves, or he who is
loved? Or are both friends? From the first of these suppositions they are
driven to the second; and from the second to the third; and neither the two
boys nor Socrates are satisfied with any of the three or with all of them.
Socrates turns to the poets, who affirm that God brings like to like
Lysis |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: to be desired, as being not in themselves good, but only sometimes and in
some instances admitting of the nature of good.
PROTARCHUS: You say most truly that this is the track which the
investigation should pursue.
SOCRATES: Well, then, assuming that pain ensues on the dissolution, and
pleasure on the restoration of the harmony, let us now ask what will be the
condition of animated beings who are neither in process of restoration nor
of dissolution. And mind what you say: I ask whether any animal who is in
that condition can possibly have any feeling of pleasure or pain, great or
small?
PROTARCHUS: Certainly not.
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