| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: dialogue is shorter, and also because the discussion of them is perpetually
crossed by the other interest of dialectic, which has begun to absorb him.
The plan of the Politicus or Statesman may be briefly sketched as follows:
(1) By a process of division and subdivision we discover the true herdsman
or king of men. But before we can rightly distinguish him from his rivals,
we must view him, (2) as he is presented to us in a famous ancient tale:
the tale will also enable us to distinguish the divine from the human
herdsman or shepherd: (3) and besides our fable, we must have an example;
for our example we will select the art of weaving, which will have to be
distinguished from the kindred arts; and then, following this pattern, we
will separate the king from his subordinates or competitors. (4) But are
Statesman |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: caught his eye. It was 'Jekyll.' At least it should have been.
Here the imitation, as far as it went, was of course accidental.
In the following case the imitation was self-conscious. In the
year 1879, just after I had left Oxford, I met at a reception at
the house of one of the Foreign Ministers a woman of very curious
exotic beauty. We became great friends, and were constantly
together. And yet what interested me most in her was not her
beauty, but her character, her entire vagueness of character. She
seemed to have no personality at all, but simply the possibility of
many types. Sometimes she would give herself up entirely to art,
turn her drawing-room into a studio, and spend two or three days a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: help her mother and Nanon. Had an able confessor then questioned her
she would, no doubt, have avowed to him that she thought neither of
her mother nor of Nanon, but was pricked by a poignant desire to look
after her cousin's room and concern herself with her cousin; to supply
what might be needed, to remedy any forgetfulness, to see that all was
done to make it, as far as possible, suitable and elegant; and, in
fact, she arrived in time to prove to her mother and Nanon that
everything still remained to be done. She put into Nanon's head the
notion of passing a warming-pan between the sheets. She herself
covered the old table with a cloth and requested Nanon to change it
every morning; she convinced her mother that it was necessary to light
Eugenie Grandet |
