| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: to them?
PROTARCHUS: What do they mean?
SOCRATES: I will explain to you, my dear Protarchus, what they mean, by
putting a question.
PROTARCHUS: Ask, and I will answer.
SOCRATES: I assume that there are two natures, one self-existent, and the
other ever in want of something.
PROTARCHUS: What manner of natures are they?
SOCRATES: The one majestic ever, the other inferior.
PROTARCHUS: You speak riddles.
SOCRATES: You have seen loves good and fair, and also brave lovers of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: all.
SOCRATES: What! have you ever been driven to admit that there was no such
thing as a bad man?
HERMOGENES: No, indeed; but I have often had reason to think that there
are very bad men, and a good many of them.
SOCRATES: Well, and have you ever found any very good ones?
HERMOGENES: Not many.
SOCRATES: Still you have found them?
HERMOGENES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And would you hold that the very good were the very wise, and
the very evil very foolish? Would that be your view?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: willing to learn any of those things in which he is conscious of his own
cleverness, and that the admonitory sort of instruction gives much trouble
and does little good--
THEAETETUS: There they are quite right.
STRANGER: Accordingly, they set to work to eradicate the spirit of conceit
in another way.
THEAETETUS: In what way?
STRANGER: They cross-examine a man's words, when he thinks that he is
saying something and is really saying nothing, and easily convict him of
inconsistencies in his opinions; these they then collect by the dialectical
process, and placing them side by side, show that they contradict one
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