| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: a First and Second Alcibiades, does to a certain extent throw a doubt upon
both of them. Though a very clever and ingenious work, the Lesser Hippias
does not appear to contain anything beyond the power of an imitator, who
was also a careful student of the earlier Platonic writings, to invent.
The motive or leading thought of the dialogue may be detected in Xen. Mem.,
and there is no similar instance of a 'motive' which is taken from Xenophon
in an undoubted dialogue of Plato. On the other hand, the upholders of the
genuineness of the dialogue will find in the Hippias a true Socratic
spirit; they will compare the Ion as being akin both in subject and
treatment; they will urge the authority of Aristotle; and they will detect
in the treatment of the Sophist, in the satirical reasoning upon Homer, in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: town."
Clara poured her coffee. "Ugh! I don't see how men can eat
so much sweet stuff. In the morning, too!"
Her aunt chuckled knowingly. "Bait a bear with honey, as we
say in the old country."
"Was he cross?" her niece asked indifferently.
"Olaf? Oh, no! He was in fine spirits. He's never cross if
you know how to take him. I never knew a man to make so little
fuss about bills. I gave him a list of things to get a yard
long, and he didn't say a word; just folded it up and put it in
his pocket."
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: images and resemblances, and pictured upon my mind every tree of
the forest and flower of the valley. I observed with equal care
the crags of the rock and the pinnacles of the palace. Sometimes I
wandered along the mazes of the rivulet, and sometimes watched the
changes of the summer clouds. To a poet nothing can be useless.
Whatever is beautiful and whatever is dreadful must be familiar to
his imagination; he must be conversant with all that is awfully
vast or elegantly little. The plants of the garden, the animals of
the wood, the minerals of the earth, and meteors of the sky, must
all concur to store his mind with inexhaustible variety; for every
idea is useful for the enforcement or decoration of moral or
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