| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: all the other sciences, are regulated by the higher science or knowledge of
knowledge. Socrates replies by again dividing the abstract from the
concrete, and asks how this knowledge conduces to happiness in the same
definite way in which medicine conduces to health.
And now, after making all these concessions, which are really inadmissible,
we are still as far as ever from ascertaining the nature of temperance,
which Charmides has already discovered, and had therefore better rest in
the knowledge that the more temperate he is the happier he will be, and not
trouble himself with the speculations of Socrates.
In this Dialogue may be noted (1) The Greek ideal of beauty and goodness,
the vision of the fair soul in the fair body, realised in the beautiful
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: Death; blend the Here with the Hereafter; cause the mortal to robe himself
in immortality; let me not say of my Dead that it is dead! I will believe
all else, bear all else, endure all else!"
Muttering to himself, Waldo walked with bent head, the mist in his eyes.
To the soul's wild cry for its own there are many answers. He began to
think of them. Was not there one of them all from which he might suck one
drop of comfort?
"You shall see her again," says the Christian, the true Bible Christian.
"Yes, you shall see her again. 'And I saw the dead, great and small, stand
before God. And the books were opened, and the dead were judged from those
things which were written in the books. And whosoever was not found
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: from the truth, which alone at such a distance of time we
could be interested in establishing. His early death had been
the only dark spot in his life, unless the papers in Miss
Bordereau's hands should perversely bring out others.
There had been an impression about 1825 that he had "treated
her badly," just as there had been an impression that he had
"served," as the London populace says, several other ladies
in the same way. Each of these cases Cumnor and I had been
able to investigate, and we had never failed to acquit him
conscientiously of shabby behavior. I judged him perhaps
more indulgently than my friend; certainly, at any rate,
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