| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: And do the Scythians and others see that which has the quality of vision,
or that which has not? said Euthydemus.
That which has the quality of vision clearly.
And you also see that which has the quality of vision? he said. (Note:
the ambiguity of (Greek), 'things visible and able to see,' (Greek), 'the
speaking of the silent,' the silent denoting either the speaker or the
subject of the speech, cannot be perfectly rendered in English. Compare
Aristot. Soph. Elenchi (Poste's translation):--
'Of ambiguous propositions the following are instances:--
'I hope that you the enemy may slay.
'Whom one knows, he knows. Either the person knowing or the person known
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: voluntarily to unite his exertions to the exertions of all the
rest. This can only be habitually and conveniently effected by
means of a newspaper; nothing but a newspaper can drop the same
thought into a thousand minds at the same moment. A newspaper is
an adviser who does not require to be sought, but who comes of
his own accord, and talks to you briefly every day of the common
weal, without distracting you from your private affairs.
Newspapers therefore become more necessary in proportion as
men become more equal, and individualism more to be feared. To
suppose that they only serve to protect freedom would be to
diminish their importance: they maintain civilization. I shall
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: and downtrodden than I had ever seen him. He was at that stage of
misery where he drew your pity so fully that you longed to kick him.
"Have you got a dollar?" asked Tripp, with his most fawning look and
his dog-like eyes that blinked in the narrow space between his high-
growing matted beard and his low-growing matted hair.
"I have," said I; and again I said, "I have," more loudly and
inhospitably, "and four besides. And I had hard work corkscrewing
them out of old Atkinson, I can tell you. And I drew them," I
continued, "to meet a want--a hiatus--a demand--a need--an exigency--a
requirement of exactly five dollars."
I was driven to emphasis by the premonition that I was to lose one of
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