| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: science (mathematics?) of generation and destruction for which he is vainly
feeling. There is no change in him; only now he is invested with a sort of
sacred character, as the prophet or priest of Apollo the God of the
festival, in whose honour he first of all composes a hymn, and then like
the swan pours forth his dying lay. Perhaps the extreme elevation of
Socrates above his own situation, and the ordinary interests of life
(compare his jeu d'esprit about his burial, in which for a moment he puts
on the 'Silenus mask'), create in the mind of the reader an impression
stronger than could be derived from arguments that such a one has in him 'a
principle which does not admit of death.'
The other persons of the Dialogue may be considered under two heads: (1)
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: She told him how she had nursed her father in his long
illness, and when he died, and she was left alone, had taken
to nurse others, partly from habit, partly to be of some
service in the world; partly, it might be, for amusement.
'There's no accounting for taste,' said she. And she told
him how she went largely to the houses of old friends, as the
need arose; and how she was thus doubly welcome as an old
friend first, and then as an experienced nurse, to whom
doctors would confide the gravest cases.
'And, indeed, it's a mere farce my being here for poor
Maria,' she continued; 'but your father takes her ailments to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: SOCRATES: That would be the business of the teacher of the chorus?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then what is the meaning of being able to rule over men who use
other men?
ALCIBIADES: I mean that they rule over men who have common rights of
citizenship, and dealings with one another.
SOCRATES: And what sort of an art is this? Suppose that I ask you again,
as I did just now, What art makes men know how to rule over their fellow-
sailors,--how would you answer?
ALCIBIADES: The art of the pilot.
SOCRATES: And, if I may recur to another old instance, what art enables
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