| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: the many this is impossible, and therefore they combine to prevent him.
But if he is a king, and has power, how base would he be in submitting to
them! To invite the common herd to be lord over him, when he might have
the enjoyment of all things! For the truth is, Socrates, that luxury and
self-indulgence are virtue and happiness; all the rest is mere talk.'
Socrates compliments Callicles on his frankness in saying what other men
only think. According to his view, those who want nothing are not happy.
'Why,' says Callicles, 'if they were, stones and the dead would be happy.'
Socrates in reply is led into a half-serious, half-comic vein of
reflection. 'Who knows,' as Euripides says, 'whether life may not be
death, and death life?' Nay, there are philosophers who maintain that even
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: confirmare sese neque legatos missuros neque ullam condicionem pacis
accepturos.
Cum per eorum fines triduum iter fecisset, inveniebat ex captivis
Sabim flumen a castris suis non amplius milibus passuum X abesse; trans id
flumen omnes Nervios consedisse adventumque ibi Romanorum expectare una
cum Atrebatibus et Viromanduis, finitimis suis (nam his utrisque
persuaserant uti eandem belli fortunam experirentur); expectari etiam ab
iis Atuatucorum copias atque esse in itinere; mulieres quique per aetatem
ad pugnam inutiles viderentur in eum locum coniecisse quo propter paludes
exercitui aditus non esset.
His rebus cognitis, exploratores centurionesque praemittit qui locum
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare: Two distincts, division none:
Number there in love was slain.
Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
Distance, and no space was seen
'Twixt the turtle and his queen;
But in them it were a wonder.
So between them love did shine,
That the turtle saw his right
Flaming in the phoenix' sight:
Either was the other's mine.
Property was thus appall'd,
|
