| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: to be sure of this; and yet, on the other hand, these same men
do nothing else but teach good works. Now all these works are
done outside of faith, therefore they are nothing and altogether
dead. For as their conscience stands toward God and as it
believes, so also are the works which grow out of it. Now they
have no faith, no good conscience toward God, therefore the works
lack their head, and all their life and goodness is nothing.
Hence it comes that when I exalt faith and reject such works done
without faith, they accuse me of forbidding good works, when in
truth I am trying hard to teach real good works of faith.
III. If you ask further, whether they count it also a good work
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: "Do you understand anything of it all?" Madame Piedefer asked of the
Presidente.
"Why, it is charming!" said Dinah to her mother.
All the good folks of Sancerre sat with eyes as large as five-franc
pieces.
"Go on, I beg," said the hostess.
Lousteau went on:--
210 OLYMPIA
"Your key----"
"Have you lost it?"
"It is in the arbor."
The Muse of the Department |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: higher by three stages, in which perception, opinion, reasoning are
successively examined, we first get rid of the confusion of the idea of
knowledge and specific kinds of knowledge,--a confusion which has been
already noticed in the Lysis, Laches, Meno, and other dialogues. In the
infancy of logic, a form of thought has to be invented before the content
can be filled up. We cannot define knowledge until the nature of
definition has been ascertained. Having succeeded in making his meaning
plain, Socrates proceeds to analyze (1) the first definition which
Theaetetus proposes: 'Knowledge is sensible perception.' This is speedily
identified with the Protagorean saying, 'Man is the measure of all things;'
and of this again the foundation is discovered in the perpetual flux of
|
