| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: SOCRATES: Then why did you sit and say nothing, instead of at once
awakening me?
CRITO: I should not have liked myself, Socrates, to be in such great
trouble and unrest as you are--indeed I should not: I have been watching
with amazement your peaceful slumbers; and for that reason I did not awake
you, because I wished to minimize the pain. I have always thought you to
be of a happy disposition; but never did I see anything like the easy,
tranquil manner in which you bear this calamity.
SOCRATES: Why, Crito, when a man has reached my age he ought not to be
repining at the approach of death.
CRITO: And yet other old men find themselves in similar misfortunes, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: Yes.
Then can you wonder that persons who are inexperienced in the truth, as
they have wrong ideas about many other things, should also have wrong ideas
about pleasure and pain and the intermediate state; so that when they are
only being drawn towards the painful they feel pain and think the pain
which they experience to be real, and in like manner, when drawn away from
pain to the neutral or intermediate state, they firmly believe that they
have reached the goal of satiety and pleasure; they, not knowing pleasure,
err in contrasting pain with the absence of pain, which is like contrasting
black with grey instead of white--can you wonder, I say, at this?
No, indeed; I should be much more disposed to wonder at the opposite.
The Republic |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: bad luck to the brides, you know! Now, just handle those nuts; heavy,
aren't they? Less than fifty to the pound; no worms there, I can tell
you."
"Well, then, send six thousand weight, for two thousand francs at
ninety days' sight, to my manufactory, Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple,
to-morrow morning early."
"You're in as great a hurry as a bride! Well, adieu, monsieur the
mayor; don't bear me a grudge. But if it is all the same to you," she
added, following Birotteau through the yard, "I would like your note
at forty days, because I have let you have them too cheap, and I don't
want to lose the discount. Pere Gigonnet may have a tender heart, but
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
