| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: the truth, and to live as well as I can, and, when I die, to die as well as
I can. And, to the utmost of my power, I exhort all other men to do the
same. And, in return for your exhortation of me, I exhort you also to take
part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than
every other earthly conflict. And I retort your reproach of me, and say,
that you will not be able to help yourself when the day of trial and
judgment, of which I was speaking, comes upon you; you will go before the
judge, the son of Aegina, and, when he has got you in his grip and is
carrying you off, you will gape and your head will swim round, just as mine
would in the courts of this world, and very likely some one will shamefully
box you on the ears, and put upon you any sort of insult.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: Watteau group of lute-playing comedians, lounging by a fountain
in a sunlit glade.
Each evanescent picture touched the vision-building faculty in
Selden, leading him so far down the vistas of fancy that even
Gerty Farish's running commentary--"Oh, how lovely Lulu Melson
looks!" or: "That must be Kate Corby, to the right there, in
purple"--did not break the spell of the illusion. Indeed, so
skilfully had the personality of the actors been subdued to the
scenes they figured in that even the least imaginative of the
audience must have felt a thrill of contrast when the curtain
suddenly parted on a picture which was simply and undisguisedly
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: before that inclination had become dangerous either to his
health or his self-respect. He had trifled with life, and
must pay the penalty. He had chosen to be Don Juan, he had
grasped at temporary pleasures, and substantial happiness and
solid industry had passed him by. He died of being Robert
Burns, and there is no levity in such a statement of the
case; for shall we not, one and all, deserve a similar
epitaph?
WORKS.
The somewhat cruel necessity which has lain upon me
throughout this paper only to touch upon those points in the
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