| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: find expression, may appear ridiculous, Hermogenes, but it cannot be
avoided--there is no better principle to which we can look for the truth of
first names. Deprived of this, we must have recourse to divine help, like
the tragic poets, who in any perplexity have their gods waiting in the air;
and must get out of our difficulty in like fashion, by saying that 'the
Gods gave the first names, and therefore they are right.' This will be the
best contrivance, or perhaps that other notion may be even better still, of
deriving them from some barbarous people, for the barbarians are older than
we are; or we may say that antiquity has cast a veil over them, which is
the same sort of excuse as the last; for all these are not reasons but only
ingenious excuses for having no reasons concerning the truth of words. And
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.: situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to
join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk
together as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted,
every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places
will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight,
and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall
see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the
South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: feet to the rumpled crest of his hair, knew the
shifting lights in his eyes, and the inflexions of his
voice, and the things he liked and disliked, and
everything there was to know about him, as minutely and
yet unconsciously as a child knows the walls of the
room it wakes up in every morning. It was this fact,
which nobody about her guessed, or would have
understood, that made her life something apart and
inviolable, as if nothing had any power to hurt or
disturb her as long as her secret was safe.
The room in which the girls sat was the one which had
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