| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: but we give them honour.' Then we give them not what is beneficial, but
what is pleasing or dear to them; and this is the point which has been
already disproved.
Socrates, although weary of the subterfuges and evasions of Euthyphro,
remains unshaken in his conviction that he must know the nature of piety,
or he would never have prosecuted his old father. He is still hoping that
he will condescend to instruct him. But Euthyphro is in a hurry and cannot
stay. And Socrates' last hope of knowing the nature of piety before he is
prosecuted for impiety has disappeared. As in the Euthydemus the irony is
carried on to the end.
The Euthyphro is manifestly designed to contrast the real nature of piety
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: Taken completely by surprise, Covey seemed to have lost his usual
strength and coolness. He was frightened, and stood puffing and
blowing, seemingly unable to command words or blows. When he saw
that poor Hughes was standing half bent with pain--his courage
quite gone the cowardly tyrant asked if I "meant to persist in my
resistance." I told him "_I did mean to resist, come what
might_;" that I had been by him treated like a _brute_, during
the last six months; and that I should stand it _no longer_.
With that, he gave me a shake, and attempted to drag me toward a
stick of wood, that was lying just outside the stable door. He
meant to knock me down with it; but, just as he leaned over to
My Bondage and My Freedom |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: precarious, after all; and if my father would only trust everything
to her management, he should never feel himself stinted: but he,
for once, was incorrigible.
What happy hours Mary and I have passed while sitting at our work
by the fire, or wandering on the heath-clad hills, or idling under
the weeping birch (the only considerable tree in the garden),
talking of future happiness to ourselves and our parents, of what
we would do, and see, and possess; with no firmer foundation for
our goodly superstructure than the riches that were expected to
flow in upon us from the success of the worthy merchant's
speculations. Our father was nearly as bad as ourselves; only that
Agnes Grey |
