| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: dear.
Very true, he replied: at any rate not if our present view holds good.
But, oh! will you tell me, I said, whether if evil were to perish, we
should hunger any more, or thirst any more, or have any similar desire? Or
may we suppose that hunger will remain while men and animals remain, but
not so as to be hurtful? And the same of thirst and the other desires,--
that they will remain, but will not be evil because evil has perished? Or
rather shall I say, that to ask what either will be then or will not be is
ridiculous, for who knows? This we do know, that in our present condition
hunger may injure us, and may also benefit us:--Is not that true?
Yes.
Lysis |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: persons theirs?
No, rather the reverse (the poet answered); if anything, they show a
less degree of gusto,[27] unless they are vastly libelled.
[27] "No, not more pleasure, but exceptional fastidiousness, if what
people say is true." {agleukesteron}, said ap. Suid. to be a
Sicilian word = "more sourly."
Well (Hiero continued), and all these wonderfully-made dishes which
are set before the tyrant, or nine-tenths of them, perhaps you have
observed, are combinations of things acid to the taste, or pungent, or
astringent, or akin to these?[28]
[28] Lit. "and their congeners," "their analogues," e.g. "curries,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: Suddenly wakened with a sound of talk
And laughter at the limit of the wood,
And glancing through the hoary boles, he saw,
Strange as to some old prophet might have seemed
A vision hovering on a sea of fire,
Damsels in divers colours like the cloud
Of sunset and sunrise, and all of them
On horses, and the horses richly trapt
Breast-high in that bright line of bracken stood:
And all the damsels talked confusedly,
And one was pointing this way, and one that,
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