| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: suitable employment for a Sophist than for a great statesman whom the city
chooses to preside over her.
SOCRATES: Yes, my sweet friend, but a great statesman is likely to have a
great intelligence. And I think that the view which is implied in Nicias'
definition of courage is worthy of examination.
LACHES: Then examine for yourself, Socrates.
SOCRATES: That is what I am going to do, my dear friend. Do not, however,
suppose I shall let you out of the partnership; for I shall expect you to
apply your mind, and join with me in the consideration of the question.
LACHES: I will if you think that I ought.
SOCRATES: Yes, I do; but I must beg of you, Nicias, to begin again. You
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: powerful anti-narcotics. His struggles to keep awake were awful--alone
with night, silence, Remorse, and Fear, with all the thoughts that
man, instinctively perhaps, has best embodied--obedient thus to a
moral truth as yet devoid of actual proof.
At last this man so powerful, this heart so hardened by political and
commercial life, this genius, obscure in history, succumbed to the
horrors of the torture he had himself created. Maddened by certain
thoughts more agonizing than those he had as yet resisted, he cut his
throat with a razor.
This death coincided, almost, with that of Louis XI. Nothing then
restrained the populace, and Malemaison, that Evil House, was
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: furniture, the handiwork of Signor Giardini, who had put it together,
at odd moments of leisure, out of the fragments of the instruments
rejected by Gambara.
Andrea had never seen anything quite so crazy. To keep a decent
countenance he turned away from a grotesque bed, contrived by the
ingenious cook in the case of an old harpsichord, and looked at
Marianna's narrow couch, of which the single mattress was covered with
a white muslin counterpane, a circumstance that gave rise in his mind
to some sad but sweet thoughts.
He wished to speak of his plans and of his morning's work; but
Gambara, in his enthusiasm, believing that he had at last met with a
Gambara |
