| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: greatest evil; for then they would also be able to do the greatest good--
and what a fine thing this would be! But in reality they can do neither;
for they cannot make a man either wise or foolish; and whatever they do is
the result of chance.
CRITO: Well, I will not dispute with you; but please to tell me, Socrates,
whether you are not acting out of regard to me and your other friends: are
you not afraid that if you escape from prison we may get into trouble with
the informers for having stolen you away, and lose either the whole or a
great part of our property; or that even a worse evil may happen to us?
Now, if you fear on our account, be at ease; for in order to save you, we
ought surely to run this, or even a greater risk; be persuaded, then, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: After marching up and down the room for some time, Piombo rang the
bell; a servant entered.
"Go and meet Mademoiselle Ginevra," said his master.
"I always regret our carriage on her account," remarked the baroness.
"She said she did not want one," replied Piombo, looking at his wife,
who, accustomed for forty years to habits of obedience, lowered her
eyes and said no more.
Already a septuagenarian, tall, withered, pale, and wrinkled, the
baroness exactly resembled those old women whom Schnetz puts into the
Italian scenes of his "genre" pictures. She was so habitually silent
that she might have been taken for another Mrs. Shandy; but,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: to such a witness simply silly.
No! the book of Job went over this whole matter once for all and
definitively. Ratiocination is a relatively superficial and
unreal path to the deity: "I will lay mine hand upon my mouth; I
have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye
seeth Thee." An intellect perplexed and baffled, yet a
trustful sense of presence--such is the situation of the man who
is sincere with himself and with the facts, but who remains
religious still.[298]
[298] Pragmatically, the most important attribute of God is his
punitive justice. But who, in the present state of theological
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