| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: not having such a knowledge?
LACHES: True.
SOCRATES: And he who descends into a well, and dives, and holds out in
this or any similar action, having no knowledge of diving, or the like, is,
as you would say, more courageous than those who have this knowledge?
LACHES: Why, Socrates, what else can a man say?
SOCRATES: Nothing, if that be what he thinks.
LACHES: But that is what I do think.
SOCRATES: And yet men who thus run risks and endure are foolish, Laches,
in comparison of those who do the same things, having the skill to do them.
LACHES: That is true.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: him, and is the better for the operation. But whence had the uneducated
man this knowledge? He had never learnt geometry in this world; nor was it
born with him; he must therefore have had it when he was not a man. And as
he always either was or was not a man, he must have always had it.
(Compare Phaedo.)
After Socrates has given this specimen of the true nature of teaching, the
original question of the teachableness of virtue is renewed. Again he
professes a desire to know 'what virtue is' first. But he is willing to
argue the question, as mathematicians say, under an hypothesis. He will
assume that if virtue is knowledge, then virtue can be taught. (This was
the stage of the argument at which the Protagoras concluded.)
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Redheaded Outfield by Zane Grey: inconsequential game of baseball, or the great,
absorbing, mutable game of life.
The shame of the situation for him was increasingly
annoying, inasmuch as this lovely girl
should stoop to flirtation with a stranger, and the
same time draw him, allure him, despite the
apparent insincerity.
``Miss Huling, I'll pitch your game for two
things,'' he continued.
``Name them.''
``Wear Yale blue in place of that orange-and-
The Redheaded Outfield |
