| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: are neither good nor evil.
And you would call pleasant, I said, the things which participate in
pleasure or create pleasure?
Certainly, he said.
Then my meaning is, that in as far as they are pleasant they are good; and
my question would imply that pleasure is a good in itself.
According to your favourite mode of speech, Socrates, 'Let us reflect about
this,' he said; and if the reflection is to the point, and the result
proves that pleasure and good are really the same, then we will agree; but
if not, then we will argue.
And would you wish to begin the enquiry? I said; or shall I begin?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: room. He was not a little astonished to see, as he went along, the
marks of a large foot along the stairways and corridors of the house.
Carefully avoiding those precious footprints, he followed them to the
door of the treasure-room, which he found locked without a sign of
fracture or defacement. Then he studied the direction of the steps;
but as they grew gradually fainter, they finally left not the
slightest trace, and it was impossible for him to discover where the
robber had fled.
"Ho, crony!" called out the king, "you have been finely robbed this
time."
At these words the old Fleming hurried out of his chamber, visibly
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: "You had better stay," she presently added, as if Gordon's continued
absence were an added reason.
"I don't know," said Bernard. "It is sometimes difficult to say
what one had better do."
I hesitate to bring against him that most inglorious of all charges,
an accusation of sentimental fatuity, of the disposition to invent
obstacles to enjoyment so that he might have the pleasure of seeing
a pretty girl attempt to remove them. But it must be admitted that
if Bernard really thought at present that he had better leave Baden,
the observation I have just quoted was not so much a sign of this
conviction as of the hope that his companion would proceed to gainsay it.
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