| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: choosing the easier part, not the better and manlier, which would have been
more becoming in one who professes to care for virtue in all his actions,
like yourself. And indeed, I am ashamed not only of you, but of us who are
your friends, when I reflect that the whole business will be attributed
entirely to our want of courage. The trial need never have come on, or
might have been managed differently; and this last act, or crowning folly,
will seem to have occurred through our negligence and cowardice, who might
have saved you, if we had been good for anything; and you might have saved
yourself, for there was no difficulty at all. See now, Socrates, how sad
and discreditable are the consequences, both to us and you. Make up your
mind then, or rather have your mind already made up, for the time of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon: hold of the fortress, and would be out of reach of his attack,
especially as Teleutias was close at hand to aid them with his fleet.
On the other hand, his own friends ran no danger of succumbing to the
enemy, as they held the cities and were numerically much stronger, and
they had established their superiority in the field. Consequently he
made for the Hellespont, where, in the absence of any rival power, he
hoped to achieve some stroke of good fortune for his city. Thus, in
the first place, having detected the rivalries existing between
Medocus,[26] the king of the Odrysians, and Seuthes,[27] the rival
ruler of the seaboard, he reconciled them to each other, and made them
friends and allies of Athens; in the belief that if he secured their
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: out into the street yesterday and this morning to buy the papers.
These papers print news which is interesting many people just now,
and some people a great deals. I am thinking of the same thing
that was evidently in your thoughts as you peered out of the garden
gate this morning, although you would not come out into the street.
I know that you do not read even one newspaper regularly. I know
also that yesterday and today you bought a great many papers,
apparently to get every possible detail about a certain subject.
Do you deny this?"
She did not deny it, she did not answer at all. She sank down on
a chair, her wide staring eyes looking straight ahead of her, and
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