| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Koran: guided.'
O sons of Adam! take your ornaments to every mosque and eat and
drink, but do not be extravagant, for He loves not the extravagant.
Say, 'Who has prohibited the ornaments of God which He brought forth
for His servants, and good things of His providing?' say, 'On the
day of judgment they shall only be for those who believed when in
the life of this world.' Thus do we detail the signs unto a people
that do know.
Say, 'My Lord has only prohibited abominable deeds, the apparent
thereof and the concealed thereof, and sin, and greed for that which
is not right, and associating with God what He has sent down no
The Koran |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: material it employs, be that material one of words or of bronze, of
colour or of ivory, and uses that beauty as a factor in producing
the aesthetic effect. From the point of view of subject, a healthy
work of art is one the choice of whose subject is conditioned by
the temperament of the artist, and comes directly out of it. In
fine, a healthy work of art is one that has both perfection and
personality. Of course, form and substance cannot be separated in
a work of art; they are always one. But for purposes of analysis,
and setting the wholeness of aesthetic impression aside for a
moment, we can intellectually so separate them. An unhealthy work
of art, on the other hand, is a work whose style is obvious, old-
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: and also by the different attitude assumed towards the teaching and persons
of the Sophists in some of the later Dialogues. The Charmides, Laches,
Lysis, all touch on the question of the relation of knowledge to virtue,
and may be regarded, if not as preliminary studies or sketches of the more
important work, at any rate as closely connected with it. The Io and the
lesser Hippias contain discussions of the Poets, which offer a parallel to
the ironical criticism of Simonides, and are conceived in a similar spirit.
The affinity of the Protagoras to the Meno is more doubtful. For there,
although the same question is discussed, 'whether virtue can be taught,'
and the relation of Meno to the Sophists is much the same as that of
Hippocrates, the answer to the question is supplied out of the doctrine of
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