| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon: Etymocles, Aristolochus, and Ocyllus. Immediately on receipt of the
news the Athenians seized these three and imprisoned them, as not
improbably concerned in the plot. Utterly taken aback by the affair
themselves, the ambassadors pleaded that, had they been aware of an
attempt to seize Piraeus, they would hardly have been so foolish as to
put themselves into the power of the Athenians, or have selected the
house of their proxenos for protection, where they were so easily to
be found. It would, they further urged, soon be plain to the Athenians
themselves that the state of Lacedaemon was quite as little cognisant
of these proceedings as they. "You will hear before long"--such was
their confident prediction--"that Sphodrias has paid for his behaviour
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: should like to know whether you mean that there are certain ideas of which
all other things partake, and from which they derive their names; that
similars, for example, become similar, because they partake of similarity;
and great things become great, because they partake of greatness; and that
just and beautiful things become just and beautiful, because they partake
of justice and beauty?
Yes, certainly, said Socrates that is my meaning.
Then each individual partakes either of the whole of the idea or else of a
part of the idea? Can there be any other mode of participation?
There cannot be, he said.
Then do you think that the whole idea is one, and yet, being one, is in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: string, and after them, away down toward the bottom, come
Shakespeare and Homer, and a shoemaker named Marais, from the back
settlements of France."
"Have they really rung in Mahomet and all those other heathens?"
"Yes - they all had their message, and they all get their reward.
The man who don't get his reward on earth, needn't bother - he will
get it here, sure."
"But why did they throw off on Shakespeare, that way, and put him
away down there below those shoe-makers and horse-doctors and
knife-grinders - a lot of people nobody ever heard of?"
"That is the heavenly justice of it - they warn't rewarded
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