| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: and female were ranged side by side with odd and even, finite and infinite.
But Plato seems also to be aware that there is a mystery of love in man as
well as in nature, extending beyond the mere immediate relation of the
sexes. He is conscious that the highest and noblest things in the world
are not easily severed from the sensual desires, or may even be regarded as
a spiritualized form of them. We may observe that Socrates himself is not
represented as originally unimpassioned, but as one who has overcome his
passions; the secret of his power over others partly lies in his passionate
but self-controlled nature. In the Phaedrus and Symposium love is not
merely the feeling usually so called, but the mystical contemplation of the
beautiful and the good. The same passion which may wallow in the mire is
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis: The old man, he gets red all over his face, and up
into the roots of his white hair, and down into his
white beard, and makes believe he is a little mad at
the old lady fur showing him off that-a-way.
"Mother," he says, "yo' shouldn't have done
that!" They had had a boy years before, and he
had died, but he always called her mother the same
as if the boy was living. He goes into the house
and gets his pipe, and brings it out and lights it,
acting like that book of poetry was a mighty small
matter to him. But he looks at Doctor Kirby out
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: men. He too has been a captive, and the willing agent of his own
captivity. But philosophy has spoken to him, and he has heard her voice;
she has gently entreated him, and brought him out of the 'miry clay,' and
purged away the mists of passion and the illusions of sense which envelope
him; his soul has escaped from the influence of pleasures and pains, which
are like nails fastening her to the body. To that prison-house she will
not return; and therefore she abstains from bodily pleasures--not from a
desire of having more or greater ones, but because she knows that only when
calm and free from the dominion of the body can she behold the light of
truth.
Simmias and Cebes remain in doubt; but they are unwilling to raise
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