| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: All other kinds of wisdom or cleverness, which seem only, such as the
wisdom of politicians, or the wisdom of the arts, are coarse and vulgar.
The unrighteous man, or the sayer and doer of unholy things, had far better
not be encouraged in the illusion that his roguery is clever; for men glory
in their shame--they fancy that they hear others saying of them, 'These are
not mere good-for-nothing persons, mere burdens of the earth, but such as
men should be who mean to dwell safely in a state.' Let us tell them that
they are all the more truly what they do not think they are because they do
not know it; for they do not know the penalty of injustice, which above all
things they ought to know--not stripes and death, as they suppose, which
evil-doers often escape, but a penalty which cannot be escaped.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: exchanged a good many allusions to their London acquaintance.
"It will certainly be much nicer having friends there,"
Bessie Alden had said one day as she sat on the sunny deck
of the steamer at her sister's feet on a large blue rug.
"Whom do you mean by friends?" Mrs. Westgate asked.
"All those English gentlemen whom you have known and entertained.
Captain Littledale, for instance. And Lord Lambeth and Mr. Beaumont,"
added Bessie Alden.
"Do you expect them to give us a very grand reception?"
Bessie reflected a moment; she was addicted, as we know,
to reflection. "Well, yes."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: higher play of fancy which creates poetry; and where there is no true
poetry, neither can there be any good prose. It had no great characters,
and therefore it had no great writers. It was incapable of distinguishing
between words and things. It was so hopelessly below the ancient standard
of classical Greek art and literature that it had no power of understanding
or of valuing them. It is doubtful whether any Greek author was justly
appreciated in antiquity except by his own contemporaries; and this neglect
of the great authors of the past led to the disappearance of the larger
part of them, while the Greek fathers were mostly preserved. There is no
reason to suppose that, in the century before the taking of Constantinople,
much more was in existence than the scholars of the Renaissance carried
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