| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: in like manner other than it, the one will be affected like the others and
the others like the one.
How do you mean?
I may take as an illustration the case of names: You give a name to a
thing?
Yes.
And you may say the name once or oftener?
Yes.
And when you say it once, you mention that of which it is the name? and
when more than once, is it something else which you mention? or must it
always be the same thing of which you speak, whether you utter the name
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: some day free and prosperous."
The face of the young enthusiast, that of Chaudieu, that of the
sailor, that of the stranger seated in the bow, lighted by the last
gleams of the twilight, formed a picture which ought the more to be
described because the description contains in itself the whole history
of the times--if it is, indeed, true that to certain men it is given
to sum up in their own persons the spirit of their age.
The religious reform undertaken by Luther in Germany, John Knox in
Scotland, Calvin in France, took hold especially of those minds in the
lower classes into which thought had penetrated. The great lords
sustained the movement only to serve interests that were foreign to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: wide territory, or harbours, or formidable citadels, things far more
troublesome and more perilous to achieve than are the pettier
ambitions of lesser men.
And hence it is, moreover, that you will find but few[14] private
persons paupers by comparison with the large number of tyrants who
deserve the title;[15] since the criterion of enough, or too much, is
not fixed by mere arithmetic, but relatively to the needs of the
individual.[16] In other words, whatever exceeds sufficiency is much,
and what falls short of that is little.[17]
[14] Reading as vulg. {alla mentoi kai penetas opsei oukh outos
oligous ton idioton os pollous ton turannon}. Lit. "however that
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