| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: 'having learned'?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And there is also 'having believed'?
GORGIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And is the 'having learned' the same as 'having believed,' and
are learning and belief the same things?
GORGIAS: In my judgment, Socrates, they are not the same.
SOCRATES: And your judgment is right, as you may ascertain in this way:--
If a person were to say to you, 'Is there, Gorgias, a false belief as well
as a true?'--you would reply, if I am not mistaken, that there is.
GORGIAS: Yes.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: came before my eyes, my head began to swim.
I embraced her with the whole strength of
youthful passion. But, like a snake, she glided
from between my arms, whispering in my ear
as she did so:
"To-night, when everyone is asleep, go out
to the shore."
Like an arrow she sprang from the room.
In the hall she upset the teapot and a candle
which was standing on the floor.
"Little devil!" cried the Cossack, who
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: with a malicious will; but he is too dull a duffer to be of any use in
a leading part; and when we come to the great villains like Macbeth,
we find, as Mr Harris points out, that they are precisely identical
with the heroes: Macbeth is only Hamlet incongruously committing
murders and engaging in hand-to-hand combats. And Hamlet, who does
not dream of apologizing for the three murders he commits, is always
apologizing because he has not yet committed a fourth, and finds, to
his great bewilderment, that he does not want to commit it. "It
cannot be," he says, "but I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall to make
oppression bitter; else, ere this, I should have fatted all the region
kites with this slave's offal." Really one is tempted to suspect that
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