| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: profess to teach). But there is another point which we failed to observe,
and in which Gorgias has never instructed Meno, nor Prodicus Socrates.
This is the nature of right opinion. For virtue may be under the guidance
of right opinion as well as of knowledge; and right opinion is for
practical purposes as good as knowledge, but is incapable of being taught,
and is also liable, like the images of Daedalus, to 'walk off,' because not
bound by the tie of the cause. This is the sort of instinct which is
possessed by statesmen, who are not wise or knowing persons, but only
inspired or divine. The higher virtue, which is identical with knowledge,
is an ideal only. If the statesman had this knowledge, and could teach
what he knew, he would be like Tiresias in the world below,--'he alone has
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: with the more majestic heave of the Pacific. The CASCO scarce
avowed a shock; but there are times and circumstances when these
harbour mouths of inland basins vomit floods, deflecting, burying,
and dismasting ships. For, conceive a lagoon perfectly sealed but
in the one point, and that of merely navigable width; conceive the
tide and wind to have heaped for hours together in that coral fold
a superfluity of waters, and the tide to change and the wind fall -
the open sluice of some great reservoirs at home will give an image
of the unstemmable effluxion.
We were scarce well headed for the pass before all heads were
craned over the rail. For the water, shoaling under our board,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: to him.
Ahab stood before him, and was lightly unwinding some thirty or forty
turns to form a preliminary hand-coil to toss overboard, when the old
Manxman, who was intently eyeing both him and the line, made bold to
speak.
"Sir, I mistrust it; this line looks far gone, long heat and wet have
spoiled it."
"'Twill hold, old gentleman. Long heat and wet, have they spoiled
thee? Thou seem'st to hold. Or, truer perhaps, life holds thee;
not thou it."
"I hold the spool, sir. But just as my captain says. With these
Moby Dick |
