| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: conquerors."
The same man, whom an enemy would have found it hard to deceive, was
pliability itself in the concerns of his friends. Whilst for ever
occupied in laying these on a secure foundation, he made it a
ceaseless task to baffle the projects of the national foe.
The epithets applied to him are significant. His relatives found in
him a kinsman who was more than kind. To his intimates he appeared as
a friend in need who is a friend indeed. To the man who had done him
some service, of tenacious memory. To the victim of injustice, a
knight-errant. And to those who had incurred danger by his side, a
saviour second only to the gods.
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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: Plato, after the manner of his age, summons as a witness about ethics and
psychology, as well as about diet and medicine; attempting to distinguish
the better lesson from the worse, sometimes altering the text from design;
more than once quoting or alluding to Homer inaccurately, after the manner
of the early logographers turning the Iliad into prose, and delighting to
draw far-fetched inferences from his words, or to make ludicrous
applications of them. He does not, like Heracleitus, get into a rage with
Homer and Archilochus (Heracl.), but uses their words and expressions as
vehicles of a higher truth; not on a system like Theagenes of Rhegium or
Metrodorus, or in later times the Stoics, but as fancy may dictate. And
the conclusions drawn from them are sound, although the premises are
The Republic |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: let him know how you have paid me out;' and then all of a
sudden, 'God,' he cried, 'I am blind,' and clapped both hands
before his eyes; and then again, and in a groaning whisper,
'Don't leave me to the crabs!' I swore I would be true to
him so long as a pulse stirred; and I redeemed my promise. I
sat there and watched him, as I had watched my father, but
with what different, with what appalling thoughts! Through
the long afternoon, he gradually sank. All that while, I
fought an uphill battle to shield him from the swarms of ants
and the clouds of mosquitoes: the prisoner of my crime. The
night fell, the roar of insects instantly redoubled in the
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