| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: one of the three heavenly or truly Olympian victories; nor can human
discipline or divine inspiration confer any greater blessing on man than
this. If, on the other hand, they leave philosophy and lead the lower life
of ambition, then probably, after wine or in some other careless hour, the
two wanton animals take the two souls when off their guard and bring them
together, and they accomplish that desire of their hearts which to the many
is bliss; and this having once enjoyed they continue to enjoy, yet rarely
because they have not the approval of the whole soul. They too are dear,
but not so dear to one another as the others, either at the time of their
love or afterwards. They consider that they have given and taken from each
other the most sacred pledges, and they may not break them and fall into
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: that other arts do the same, as in the case of the painter, a question has
arisen which is a very fair one: Of what persuasion is rhetoric the
artificer, and about what?--is not that a fair way of putting the question?
GORGIAS: I think so.
SOCRATES: Then, if you approve the question, Gorgias, what is the answer?
GORGIAS: I answer, Socrates, that rhetoric is the art of persuasion in
courts of law and other assemblies, as I was just now saying, and about the
just and unjust.
SOCRATES: And that, Gorgias, was what I was suspecting to be your notion;
yet I would not have you wonder if by-and-by I am found repeating a
seemingly plain question; for I ask not in order to confute you, but as I
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: had perished in a blizzard. The next summer
one of his plow horses broke its leg in a prairie-
dog hole and had to be shot. Another summer he
lost his hogs from cholera, and a valuable
stallion died from a rattlesnake bite. Time and
again his crops had failed. He had lost two
children, boys, that came between Lou and
Emil, and there had been the cost of sickness
and death. Now, when he had at last struggled
out of debt, he was going to die himself. He
was only forty-six, and had, of course, counted
O Pioneers! |
