| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: etiam modestiam.'), Modesty, Discretion, Wisdom, without completely
exhausting by all these terms the various associations of the word. It may
be described as 'mens sana in corpore sano,' the harmony or due proportion
of the higher and lower elements of human nature which 'makes a man his own
master,' according to the definition of the Republic. In the accompanying
translation the word has been rendered in different places either
Temperance or Wisdom, as the connection seemed to require: for in the
philosophy of Plato (Greek) still retains an intellectual element (as
Socrates is also said to have identified (Greek) with (Greek): Xen. Mem.)
and is not yet relegated to the sphere of moral virtue, as in the
Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: Everybody at the after end of the ship was sleeping profoundly.
I came out again on the quarter-deck, agreeably at ease in my sleeping
suit on that warm breathless night, barefooted, a glowing cigar
in my teeth, and, going forward, I was met by the profound silence of
the fore end of the ship. Only as I passed the door of the forecastle,
I heard a deep, quiet, trustful sigh of some sleeper inside.
And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared
with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life
presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary
moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal
and by the singleness of its purpose.
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: own aspect--he could scarce have said why--intensified this note.
Almost as white as wax, with the marks and signs in her face as
numerous and as fine as if they had been etched by a needle, with
soft white draperies relieved by a faded green scarf on the
delicate tone of which the years had further refined, she was the
picture of a serene and exquisite but impenetrable sphinx, whose
head, or indeed all whose person, might have been powdered with
silver. She was a sphinx, yet with her white petals and green
fronds she might have been a lily too--only an artificial lily,
wonderfully imitated and constantly kept, without dust or stain,
though not exempt from a slight droop and a complexity of faint
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