| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: ignorance, for instance, be useful for knowledge, or disease for health, or
vice for virtue?
CRITIAS: Never.
SOCRATES: And yet we have already agreed--have we not?--that there can be
no knowledge where there has not previously been ignorance, nor health
where there has not been disease, nor virtue where there has not been vice?
CRITIAS: I think that we have.
SOCRATES: But then it would seem that the antecedents without which a
thing cannot exist are not necessarily useful to it. Otherwise ignorance
would appear useful for knowledge, disease for health, and vice for virtue.
Critias still showed great reluctance to accept any argument which went to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed by Edna Ferber: was going to leave me with that barrier of silence
unbroken. But as I stepped stiffly to the curbing his
hands closed about mine with the old steady grip. I
looked up quickly, to find a smile in the corners of the
tired eyes.
"You--you will let me see you--sometimes?"
But wisdom came to my aid. "Not now. It is better
that we go our separate ways for a few weeks, until our
work has served to adjust the balance that has been
disturbed. At the end of that time I shall write you,
and from that time until you sail in June we shall be
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: before him, I was greeted on the threshold by that peculiar and
convincing sound of the rain echoing over empty chambers. The
entrance-hall, in which I now found myself, was of a good size and
good proportions; potted plants occupied the corners; the paved
floor was soiled with muddy footprints and encumbered with straw;
on a mahogany hall-table, which was the only furniture, a candle
had been stuck and suffered to burn down - plainly a long while
ago, for the gutterings were green with mould. My mind, under
these new impressions, worked with unusual vivacity. I was here
shut off with Fenn and his hireling in a deserted house, a
neglected garden, and a wood of evergreens: the most eligible
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