| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: into circulation, and he who has the largest number of such pieces is
esteemed the richest and best off. And yet if any one among us had a mass
of such coins he would be no wealthier than if he had so many pebbles from
the mountain. At Lacedaemon, again, they use iron by weight which has been
rendered useless: and he who has the greatest mass of such iron is thought
to be the richest, although elsewhere it has no value. In Ethiopia
engraved stones are employed, of which a Lacedaemonian could make no use.
Once more, among the Nomad Scythians a man who owned the house of Polytion
would not be thought richer than one who possessed Mount Lycabettus among
ourselves. And clearly those things cannot all be regarded as possessions;
for in some cases the possessors would appear none the richer thereby:
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: all manner of little insects began to chirp and hop about in the
willows. A breeze sprang up from the west and brought the heavy
smell of ripened corn. The boys rolled over and shook themselves.
We stripped and plunged into the river just as the sun came up over
the windy bluffs.
When I came home to Sandtown at Christmas time, we skated out
to our island and talked over the whole project of the Enchanted
Bluff, renewing our resolution to find it.
Although that was twenty years ago, none of us have ever
climbed the Enchanted Bluff. Percy Pound is a stockbroker in
Kansas City and will go nowhere that his red touring car cannot
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: who knows how to use it?
ERYXIAS: True.
SOCRATES: And the same is the case with everything else?
ERYXIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then gold and silver and all the other elements which are
supposed to make up wealth are only useful to the person who knows how to
use them?
ERYXIAS: Exactly.
SOCRATES: And were we not saying before that it was the business of a good
man and a gentleman to know where and how anything should be used?
ERYXIAS: Yes.
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