| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: convenience of the reader; at the same time, indications of the date
supplied either by Plato himself or allusions found in the dialogues have
not been lost sight of. Much may be said about this subject, but the
results can only be probable; there are no materials which would enable us
to attain to anything like certainty.
The relations of knowledge and virtue are again brought forward in the
companion dialogues of the Lysis and Laches; and also in the Protagoras and
Euthydemus. The opposition of abstract and particular knowledge in this
dialogue may be compared with a similar opposition of ideas and phenomena
which occurs in the Prologues to the Parmenides, but seems rather to belong
to a later stage of the philosophy of Plato.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: blood-weeds, wild cane, and marsh grasses. For, at a hasty
glance, the general appearance of this marsh verdure is vague
enough, as it ranges away towards the sand, to convey the idea of
amphibious vegetation,--a primitive flora as yet undecided
whether to retain marine habits and forms, or to assume
terrestrial ones;--and the occasional inspection of surprising
shapes might strengthen this fancy. Queer flat-lying and
many-branching things, which resemble sea-weeds in juiciness and
color and consistency, crackle under your feet from time to time;
the moist and weighty air seems heated rather from below than
from above,--less by the sun than by the radiation of a cooling
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: swooped over a rose growing in the embryo orchard then stretched out her
hand with a magnificent gesture to the Herr Professor. He presented me.
"This is my little English friend of whom I have spoken. She is the
stranger in our midst. We have been eating cherries together."
"How delightful," sighed Frau Godowska. "My daughter and I have often
observed you through the bedroom window. Haven't we, Sonia?"
Sonia absorbed my outward and visible form with an inward and spiritual
glance, then repeated the magnificent gesture for my benefit. The four of
us sat on the bench, with that faint air of excitement of passengers
established in a railway carriage on the qui vive for the train whistle.
Frau Godowska sneezed. "I wonder if it is hay fever," she remarked,
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