| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: illustration of the argument about pleasure; one such is sufficient to
prove to us that a small pleasure or a small amount of pleasure, if pure or
unalloyed with pain, is always pleasanter and truer and fairer than a great
pleasure or a great amount of pleasure of another kind.
PROTARCHUS: Assuredly; and the instance you have given is quite
sufficient.
SOCRATES: But what do you say of another question:--have we not heard that
pleasure is always a generation, and has no true being? Do not certain
ingenious philosophers teach this doctrine, and ought not we to be grateful
to them?
PROTARCHUS: What do they mean?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: all the strength of noon.
Angel Clare, who communistically stuck to his rule of
taking part with the rest in everything, glanced up now
and then. It was not, of course, by accident that he
walked next to Tess.
"Well, how are you?" he murmured.
"Very well, thank you, sir," she replied demurely.
As they had been discussing a score of personal matters
only half-an-hour before, the introductory style seemed
a little superfluous. But they got no further in
speech just then. They crept and crept, the hem of her
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: true, that 'only a man who has his wits can act or judge about himself and
his own affairs.' And for this reason it is customary to appoint
interpreters to be judges of the true inspiration. Some persons call them
prophets; they are quite unaware that they are only the expositors of dark
sayings and visions, and are not to be called prophets at all, but only
interpreters of prophecy.
Such is the nature of the liver, which is placed as we have described in
order that it may give prophetic intimations. During the life of each
individual these intimations are plainer, but after his death the liver
becomes blind, and delivers oracles too obscure to be intelligible. The
neighbouring organ (the spleen) is situated on the left-hand side, and is
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