| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And that would be true of a dog, or of any other animal?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And is it better to possess the mind of an archer who
voluntarily or involuntarily misses the mark?
HIPPIAS: Of him who voluntarily misses.
SOCRATES: This would be the better mind for the purposes of archery?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then the mind which involuntarily errs is worse than the mind
which errs voluntarily?
HIPPIAS: Yes, certainly, in the use of the bow.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: My love is dead: ah! well-a-day,
See at her silent feet I lay
A dove with broken wings!
Ah, Love! ah, Love! that thou wert slain -
Fond Dove, fond Dove return again!
Poem: Tristitiae
[Greek text which cannot be reproduced]
O well for him who lives at ease
With garnered gold in wide domain,
Nor heeds the splashing of the rain,
The crashing down of forest trees.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: which is meant chiefly the greater pleasure to the ear and the greater
facility to the organs of speech which is given by a new formation or
pronunciation of a word (c) the necessity of finding new expressions for
new classes or processes of things. We are told that changes of sound take
place by innumerable gradations until a whole tribe or community or society
find themselves acquiescing in a new pronunciation or use of language. Yet
no one observes the change, or is at all aware that in the course of a
lifetime he and his contemporaries have appreciably varied their intonation
or use of words. On the other hand, the necessities of language seem to
require that the intermediate sounds or meanings of words should quickly
become fixed or set and not continue in a state of transition. The process
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