| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: terrible; only the courageous man can tell that.' Laches draws the
inference that the courageous man is either a soothsayer or a god.
Again, (2) in Nicias' way of speaking, the term 'courageous' must be denied
to animals or children, because they do not know the danger. Against this
inversion of the ordinary use of language Laches reclaims, but is in some
degree mollified by a compliment to his own courage. Still, he does not
like to see an Athenian statesman and general descending to sophistries of
this sort. Socrates resumes the argument. Courage has been defined to be
intelligence or knowledge of the terrible; and courage is not all virtue,
but only one of the virtues. The terrible is in the future, and therefore
the knowledge of the terrible is a knowledge of the future. But there can
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: men such as he; but it was a Pope who thrust Cellini into prison,
and kept him there till he sickened with rage, and created unreal
visions for himself, and saw the gilded sun enter his room, and
grew so enamoured of it that he sought to escape, and crept out
from tower to tower, and falling through dizzy air at dawn, maimed
himself, and was by a vine-dresser covered with vine leaves, and
carried in a cart to one who, loving beautiful things, had care of
him. There is danger in Popes. And as for the People, what of
them and their authority? Perhaps of them and their authority one
has spoken enough. Their authority is a thing blind, deaf,
hideous, grotesque, tragic, amusing, serious, and obscene. It is
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: flashed upon the ambiguity of Daisy's behavior, and the riddle had
become easy to read. She was a young lady whom a gentleman need
no longer be at pains to respect. He stood there, looking at her--
looking at her companion and not reflecting that though he saw
them vaguely, he himself must have been more brightly visible.
He felt angry with himself that he had bothered so much about
the right way of regarding Miss Daisy Miller. Then, as he was going
to advance again, he checked himself, not from the fear that he was doing
her injustice, but from a sense of the danger of appearing unbecomingly
exhilarated by this sudden revulsion from cautious criticism.
He turned away toward the entrance of the place, but, as he did so,
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