| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: originally found in Aristotle, but in Plato.
The doctrine that virtue and art are in a mean, which is familiarized to us
by the study of the Nicomachean Ethics, is also first distinctly asserted
in the Statesman of Plato. The too much and the too little are in restless
motion: they must be fixed by a mean, which is also a standard external to
them. The art of measuring or finding a mean between excess and defect,
like the principle of division in the Phaedrus, receives a particular
application to the art of discourse. The excessive length of a discourse
may be blamed; but who can say what is excess, unless he is furnished with
a measure or standard? Measure is the life of the arts, and may some day
be discovered to be the single ultimate principle in which all the sciences
Statesman |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum: Nevertheless, she did not forget to look in the Great
Book of Records each day to see if any mention was made
of the visit of Ozma and Dorothy to the Enchanted
Mountain of the Flatheads and the Magic Isle of the
Skeezers. The Records told her that Ozma had arrived at
the mountain, that she had escaped, with her companion,
and gone to the island of the Skeezers, and that Queen
Coo-ee-oh had submerged the island so that it was
entirely under water. Then came the statement that the
Flatheads had come to the lake to poison the fishes and
that their Supreme Dictator had transformed Queen Coo-
Glinda of Oz |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: Hartley. I trust you may remember all that you have heard in this
room; it may be useful to you."
Harry at once made his escape from the drawing-room; and as he ran
upstairs he could hear the General's voice upraised in declamation,
and the thin tones of Lady Vandeleur planting icy repartees at
every opening. How cordially he admired the wife! How skilfully
she could evade an awkward question! with what secure effrontery
she repeated her instructions under the very guns of the enemy! and
on the other hand, how he detested the husband!
There had been nothing unfamiliar in the morning's events, for he
was continually in the habit of serving Lady Vandeleur on secret
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