| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: music; no juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; no Merry
Andrew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps a hundred
years old, but still effective, by their appeals to the very
broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. All such professors of
the several branches of jocularity would have been sternly
repressed, not only by the rigid discipline of law, but by the
general sentiment which give law its vitality. Not the less,
however, the great, honest face of the people smiled -- grimly,
perhaps, but widely too. Nor were sports wanting, such as the
colonists had witnessed, and shared in, long ago, at the country
fairs and on the village-greens of England; and which it was
The Scarlet Letter |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: work.
YOUNG SOCRATES: True.
STRANGER: Are not all such sciences, no less than arithmetic and the like,
subjects of pure knowledge; and is not the difference between the two
classes, that the one sort has the power of judging only, and the other of
ruling as well?
YOUNG SOCRATES: That is evident.
STRANGER: May we not very properly say, that of all knowledge, there are
two divisions--one which rules, and the other which judges?
YOUNG SOCRATES: I should think so.
STRANGER: And when men have anything to do in common, that they should be
Statesman |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: definition.
SOCRATES: Then now we have to consider, What is money? Or else later on
we shall be found to differ about the question. For instance, the
Carthaginians use money of this sort. Something which is about the size of
a stater is tied up in a small piece of leather: what it is, no one knows
but the makers. A seal is next set upon the leather, which then passes
into circulation, and he who has the largest number of such pieces is
esteemed the richest and best off. And yet if any one among us had a mass
of such coins he would be no wealthier than if he had so many pebbles from
the mountain. At Lacedaemon, again, they use iron by weight which has been
rendered useless: and he who has the greatest mass of such iron is thought
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