| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: Socrates to dance naked out of love for Menexenus, is any more un-Platonic
than the threat of physical force which Phaedrus uses towards Socrates.
Nor is there any real vulgarity in the fear which Socrates expresses that
he will get a beating from his mistress, Aspasia: this is the natural
exaggeration of what might be expected from an imperious woman. Socrates
is not to be taken seriously in all that he says, and Plato, both in the
Symposium and elsewhere, is not slow to admit a sort of Aristophanic
humour. How a great original genius like Plato might or might not have
written, what was his conception of humour, or what limits he would have
prescribed to himself, if any, in drawing the picture of the Silenus
Socrates, are problems which no critical instinct can determine.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: set her foot upon the broad flagged terrace, the night had come
completely; the palace front was thick with lighted windows; and
along the balustrade, the lamp on every twentieth baluster shone
clear. A few withered tracks of sunset, amber and glow-worm green,
still lingered in the western sky; and she paused once again to
watch them fading.
'And to think,' she said, 'that here am I - destiny embodied, a
norn, a fate, a providence - and have no guess upon which side I
shall declare myself! What other woman in my place would not be
prejudiced, and think herself committed? But, thank Heaven! I was
born just!' Otto's windows were bright among the rest, and she
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
It may amuse you to know that a very long while ago, I broke my
heart to try to imitate your verses, and failed hopelessly. I saw
some of the evidences the other day among my papers, and blushed to
the heels.
R. L. S.
I give up finding out your name in the meantime, and keep to that
by which you will be known - Frederick Locker.
Letter: TO FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON
[SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH], 24TH SEPTEMBER 1886.
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