| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: instead of bringing to the birth living and healthy creations? These he
would regard as the signs of an age wanting in original power.
Turning from literature and the arts to law and politics, again we fall
under the lash of Socrates. For do we not often make 'the worse appear the
better cause;' and do not 'both parties sometimes agree to tell lies'? Is
not pleading 'an art of speaking unconnected with the truth'? There is
another text of Socrates which must not be forgotten in relation to this
subject. In the endless maze of English law is there any 'dividing the
whole into parts or reuniting the parts into a whole'--any semblance of an
organized being 'having hands and feet and other members'? Instead of a
system there is the Chaos of Anaxagoras (omou panta chremata) and no Mind
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan: his death, to publish this partial revision. Numberless unauthorized
changes in the play have been made for histrionic purposes, from
the first undated Dublin edition to that of Mr. Augustin Daly.
Current texts may usually be traced, directly or indirectly,
to the two-volume Murray edition of Sheridan's plays, in 1821.
Some of the changes from the original manuscript, such as the
blending of the parts of Miss Verjuice and Snake, are doubtless
effective for reasons of dramatic economy, but many of the "cuts"
are to be regretted from the reader's standpoint. The student
of English drama will prefer Sheridan's own text to editorial
emendations, however clever or effective for dramatic ends.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: [4] Reading {epikataskeuazumenois}, or, if {episkeuazomenoi}, transl.
"at the rehabilitation of old works."
[5] Cf. "Oecon." xvii. 12.
[6] "The thousand and one embellishments of civil life."
[7] "When a state is struck down with barrenness," etc. See "Mem." II.
vii.
And if it be asserted that gold is after all just as useful as silver,
without gainsaying the proposition I may note this fact[8] about gold,
that, with a sudden influx of this metal, it is the gold itself which
is depreciated whilst causing at the same time a rise in the value of
silver.
|
