| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: failed to imitate them. It is an old story, trite enough to those of
us who have cared to attend to it, how once on a time Nicias, the son
of Niceratus, owned a thousand men in the silver mines,[11] whom he
let out to Sosias, a Thracian, on the following terms. Sosias was to
pay him a net obol a day, without charge or deduction, for every slave
of the thousand, and be[12] responsible for keeping up the number
perpetually at that figure. So again Hipponicus[13] had six hundred
slaves let out on the same principle, which brought him in a net
mina[14] a day without charge or deduction. Then there was
Philemonides, with three hundred, bringing him in half a mina, and
others, I make no doubt there were, making profits in proportion to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: necessity, it is fit we speak, in what cases they are
of necessity. Good commanders in the wars must
be taken, be they never so ambitious; for the use
of their service, dispenseth with the rest; and to
take a soldier without ambition, is to pull off his
spurs. There is also great use of ambitious men, in
being screens to princes in matters of danger and
envy; for no man will take that part, except he be
like a seeled dove, that mounts and mounts, be-
cause he cannot see about him. There is use also of
ambitious men, in pulling down the greatness of
Essays of Francis Bacon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cromwell by William Shakespeare: I pray, now where is hospitality?
Where now may poor distressed people go,
For to relieve their need, or rest their bones,
When weary travel doth oppress their limbs?
And where religious men should take them in,
Shall now be kept back with a Mastiff do,
And thousand thousand--
NORFOLK.
O, my Lord, no more: things past redress
Tis bootless to complain.
CROMWELL.
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