| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: foiled and mastered in the hands of the great dialectician. Perhaps he
regarded these answers as good enough for his accuser, of whom he makes
very light. Also there is a touch of irony in them, which takes them out
of the category of sophistry. (Compare Euthyph.)
That the manner in which he defends himself about the lives of his
disciples is not satisfactory, can hardly be denied. Fresh in the memory
of the Athenians, and detestable as they deserved to be to the newly
restored democracy, were the names of Alcibiades, Critias, Charmides. It
is obviously not a sufficient answer that Socrates had never professed to
teach them anything, and is therefore not justly chargeable with their
crimes. Yet the defence, when taken out of this ironical form, is
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: It was a principle in the Welland family that people's
days and hours should be what Mrs. Welland called
"provided for." The melancholy possibility of having
to "kill time" (especially for those who did not care for
whist or solitaire) was a vision that haunted her as the
spectre of the unemployed haunts the philanthropist.
Another of her principles was that parents should never
(at least visibly) interfere with the plans of their
married children; and the difficulty of adjusting this respect
for May's independence with the exigency of Mr. Welland's
claims could be overcome only by the exercise of
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: that possibility. From the point of view of purely military
considerations, the Trentino offensive should perhaps have ended
in the capitulation of Vicenza.
I will confess I am glad it did not do so. This tour of the
fronts has made me very sad and weary with a succession of ruins.
I can bear no more ruins unless they are the ruins of Dusseldorf,
Cologne, Berlin, or suchlike modern German city. Anxious as I am
to be a systematic Philistine, to express my preference for
Marinetti over the Florentine British and generally to antagonise
aesthetic prigs, I rejoiced over that sunlit land as one
might rejoice over a child saved from beasts.
|
