| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy: Occasionally some angry housewife scolded him, or a drunken
peasant reviled him, but for the most part he was given food and
drink and even something to take with him. His noble bearing
disposed some people in his favour, while others on the contrary
seemed pleased at the sight of a gentleman who had come to
beggary.
But his gentleness prevailed with everyone.
Often, finding a copy of the Gospels in a hut he would read it
aloud, and when they heard him the people were always touched and
surprised, as at something new yet familiar.
When he succeeded in helping people, either by advice, or by his
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: SOCRATES: But if this is a battle of names, some of them asserting that
they are like the truth, others contending that THEY are, how or by what
criterion are we to decide between them? For there are no other names to
which appeal can be made, but obviously recourse must be had to another
standard which, without employing names, will make clear which of the two
are right; and this must be a standard which shows the truth of things.
CRATYLUS: I agree.
SOCRATES: But if that is true, Cratylus, then I suppose that things may be
known without names?
CRATYLUS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: But how would you expect to know them? What other way can there
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: As in several other Dialogues, there is more of system in the Phaedo than
appears at first sight. The succession of arguments is based on previous
philosophies; beginning with the mysteries and the Heracleitean alternation
of opposites, and proceeding to the Pythagorean harmony and transmigration;
making a step by the aid of Platonic reminiscence, and a further step by
the help of the nous of Anaxagoras; until at last we rest in the conviction
that the soul is inseparable from the ideas, and belongs to the world of
the invisible and unknown. Then, as in the Gorgias or Republic, the
curtain falls, and the veil of mythology descends upon the argument. After
the confession of Socrates that he is an interested party, and the
acknowledgment that no man of sense will think the details of his narrative
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