| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: support of life, but political wisdom he had not; for that was in the
keeping of Zeus, and the power of Prometheus did not extend to entering
into the citadel of heaven, where Zeus dwelt, who moreover had terrible
sentinels; but he did enter by stealth into the common workshop of Athene
and Hephaestus, in which they used to practise their favourite arts, and
carried off Hephaestus' art of working by fire, and also the art of Athene,
and gave them to man. And in this way man was supplied with the means of
life. But Prometheus is said to have been afterwards prosecuted for theft,
owing to the blunder of Epimetheus.
Now man, having a share of the divine attributes, was at first the only one
of the animals who had any gods, because he alone was of their kindred; and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: he knows all things; he can make anything, including his own clothes; he is
a manufacturer of poems and declamations, and also of seal-rings, shoes,
strigils; his girdle, which he has woven himself, is of a finer than
Persian quality. He is a vainer, lighter nature than the two great
Sophists (compare Protag.), but of the same character with them, and
equally impatient of the short cut-and-thrust method of Socrates, whom he
endeavours to draw into a long oration. At last, he gets tired of being
defeated at every point by Socrates, and is with difficulty induced to
proceed (compare Thrasymachus, Protagoras, Callicles, and others, to whom
the same reluctance is ascribed).
Hippias like Protagoras has common sense on his side, when he argues,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: and gas. Their leather belts were loosened, their soft pink shirts
unbuttoned at the collar. They were listening with gloomy voracity to
the instruction of a third. They sat at a table bared of its customary
sporting ornaments, and from time to time they questioned, sucked their
pencils, and scrawled vigorous, laconic notes. Their necks and faces
shone with the bloom of out-of-doors. Studious concentration was
evidently a painful novelty to their features. Drops of perspiration
came one by one from their matted hair, and their hands dampened the
paper upon which they wrote. The windows stood open wide to the May
darkness, but nothing came in save heat and insects; for spring, being
behind time, was making up with a sultry burst at the end, as a delayed
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