| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: thing as a real or disinterested passion, which would be at the same time
lasting, could be conceived. 'But did I call this "love"? O God, forgive
my blasphemy. This is not love. Rather it is the love of the world. But
there is another kingdom of love, a kingdom not of this world, divine,
eternal. And this other love I will now show you in a mystery.'
Then follows the famous myth, which is a sort of parable, and like other
parables ought not to receive too minute an interpretation. In all such
allegories there is a great deal which is merely ornamental, and the
interpreter has to separate the important from the unimportant. Socrates
himself has given the right clue when, in using his own discourse
afterwards as the text for his examination of rhetoric, he characterizes it
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: bedded down, seven or eight hours' work would have got this
hooker off, and there's no man that ever went two years to sea
but must have known it."
I could only utter an exclamation.
Nares raised his finger warningly. "Don't let THEM get hold of
it," said he. "Think what you like, but say nothing."
I glanced round; the dusk was melting into early night; the
twinkle of a lantern marked the schooner's position in the
distance; and our men, free from further labour, stood grouped
together in the waist, their faces illuminated by their glowing
pipes.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: Peter Halket looked up at him; the man seemed dead. He touched him softly
on the arm, then shook it slightly.
The man opened his eyes slowly, without raising his head; and looked at
Peter from under his weary eyebrows. Except that they moved they might
have been the eyes of a dead thing.
Peter put up his fingers to his own lips--"Hus-h! hus-h!" he said.
The man hung torpid, still looking at Peter.
Quickly Peter Halket knelt down and took the knife from his belt. In an
instant the riems that bound the feet were cut through; in another he had
cut the riems from the waist and neck: the riems dropped to the ground
from the arms, and the man stood free. Like a dazed dumb creature, he
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