| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: 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
the reductio ad absurdum of the doctrine that vice is ignorance, traces of
a Platonic authorship. In reference to the last point we are doubtful, as
in some of the other dialogues, whether the author is asserting or
overthrowing the paradox of Socrates, or merely following the argument
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: I can make my fortune.' Massol was just about to put his compatriot
neck and crop out of the door with some brutal speech, when the rustic
ended his appeal thus: 'I don't ask to enter the administration where
people advance like tortoises--there's your cousin, who has stuck in
one post for twenty years. No, I only want to make my debut.'--'On the
stage?' asked Massol only too happy at that conclusion.--'No, though I
have gesture enough, and figure, and memory. But there's too much wear
and tear; I prefer the career of PORTER.' Massol kept his countenance,
and replied: 'I think there's more wear and tear in that, but as your
choice is made I'll see what I can do'; and he got him, as
Ravenouillet says, his first 'cordon.'"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: As far as these from their ancestral shrine,
So far, so foreign, your divided friends
Wander, estranged in body, not in mind.
Apemama.
XXXVII - THE HOUSE OF TEMBINOKA
[At my departure from the island of Apemama, for which you will
look in vain in most atlases, the King and I agreed, since we both
set up to be in the poetical way, that we should celebrate our
separation in verse. Whether or not his Majesty has been true to his
bargain, the laggard posts of the Pacific may perhaps inform me in
six months, perhaps not before a year. The following lines represent
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