| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from United States Declaration of Independence: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves
invested with Power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection
and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns,
and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries
to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun
with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the
most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas
United States Declaration of Independence |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: England, during Elizabeth's reign, the practical weakness of
Neoplatonism was compensated by the noble practical life which men were
compelled to live in those great times; by the strong hold which they
had of the ideas of family and national life, of law and personal faith.
And I cannot but believe it to have been a mighty gain to such men as
Sidney, Raleigh, and Spenser, that they had drunk, however slightly, of
the wells of Proclus and Plotinus. One cannot read Spenser's "Fairy
Queen," above all his Garden of Adonis, and his cantos on Mutability,
without feeling that his Neoplatonism must have kept him safe from many
a dark eschatological superstition, many a narrow and bitter dogmatism,
which was even then tormenting the English mind, and must have helped to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: wisdom is only the knowledge of knowledge and of ignorance, and of nothing
else?
That is obvious.
Then wisdom will not be the producer of health.
Certainly not.
The art of health is different.
Yes, different.
Nor does wisdom give advantage, my good friend; for that again we have just
now been attributing to another art.
Very true.
How then can wisdom be advantageous, when giving no advantage?
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