| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: MENO: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then we acknowledged that it was not taught, and was not wisdom?
MENO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And yet we admitted that it was a good?
MENO: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the right guide is useful and good?
MENO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And the only right guides are knowledge and true opinion--these
are the guides of man; for things which happen by chance are not under the
guidance of man: but the guides of man are true opinion and knowledge.
MENO: I think so too.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: first, what they now do is this--they deposit their property in the
islands,[19] trusting to their command of the sea, and they suffer the
soil of Aticca to be ravaged without a sigh. To expend pity on that,
they know, would be to deprive themselves of other blessings still
more precious.[20]
[16] See Thuc. i. 143. Pericles says: "Reflect, if we were islanders,
who would be more invulnerable? Let us imagine that we are."
[17] Or, "are the more ready to cringe." See, for the word
{uperkhontai}, "Pol. Lac." viii. 2; Plat. "Crit." 53 E;
Rutherford, "New Phrynichus," p. 110.
[18] Or, "by the minority"; or, "by a handful of people."
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: burning like a roof afire. He began to sing. He put such
feeling into his voice and such expression into the strings
that, as he finished, Demetrio turned his head aside to
hide his tears.
But Valderrama fell upon him, embraced him warmly,
and with a familiarity he showed everyone at the ap-
propriate moment, he whispered:
"Drink them! . . . Those are beautiful tears."
Demetrio asked for the bottle, passed it to Valder-
rama. Greedily the poet drank half its contents in one
gulp; then, showing only the whites of his eyes, he faced
The Underdogs |
