| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: 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.)
Socrates has no difficulty in showing that virtue is a good, and that
goods, whether of body or mind, must be under the direction of knowledge.
Upon the assumption just made, then, virtue is teachable. But where are
the teachers? There are none to be found. This is extremely discouraging.
Virtue is no sooner discovered to be teachable, than the discovery follows
that it is not taught. Virtue, therefore, is and is not teachable.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: be interested! These of my long acquaintance belonged to my
country's Executive, acute, alert, with the marks of travail on
them. Gladly I went in and out of the women's cabins and listened
to the argot of the men; my own ruling, administering, soldiering
little lot.
Cecily looked at them askance. To her the atmosphere was alien, and
I perceived that gently and privately she registered objections.
She cast a disapproving eye upon the wife of a Conservator of
Forests, who scanned with interest a distant funnel and laid a small
wager that it belonged to the Messageries Maritimes. She looked
with a straightened lip at the crisply stepping women who walked the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: page 153? I get lost in it.
Chapters VIII. and IX. of Meredith's story are very good, I think.
But who wrote the review of my book? whoever he was, he cannot
write; he is humane, but a duffer; I could weep when I think of
him; for surely to be virtuous and incompetent is a hard lot. I
should prefer to be a bold pirate, the gay sailor-boy of
immorality, and a publisher at once. My mind is extinct; my
appetite is expiring; I have fallen altogether into a hollow-eyed,
yawning way of life, like the parties in Burne Jones's pictures. .
. . Talking of Burns. (Is this not sad, Weg? I use the term of
reproach not because I am angry with you this time, but because I
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