| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: resemblance; so, since it is hard, or indeed perhaps impossible, to
show the life of a man wholly free from blemish, in all that is
excellent we must follow truth exactly, and give it fully; any lapses
or faults that occur, through human passions or political
necessities, we may regard rather as the shortcomings of some
particular virtue, than as the natural effects of vice; and may be
content without introducing them, curiously and officiously, into our
narrative, if it be but out of tenderness to the weakness of nature,
which has never succeeded in producing any human character so perfect
in virtue, as to be pure from all admixture, and open to no
criticism. On considering; with myself to whom I should compare
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: constituit ibique tormenta conlocavit, ne, cum aciem instruxisset, hostes,
quod tantum multitudine poterant, ab lateribus pugnantes suos circumvenire
possent. Hoc facto, duabus legionibus quas proxime conscripserat in
castris relictis ut, si quo opus esset, subsidio duci possent, reliquas VI
legiones pro castris in acie constituit. Hostes item suas copias ex
castris eductas instruxerunt.
Palus erat non magna inter nostrum atque hostium exercitum. Hanc si
nostri transirent hostes expectabant; nostri autem, si ab illis initium
transeundi fieret, ut impeditos adgrederentur parati in armis erant.
Interim proelio equestri inter duas acies contendebatur. Ubi neutri
transeundi initium faciunt, secundiore equitum proelio nostris Caesar suos
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: can express. If you ask any of them a question, he will produce, as from a
quiver, sayings brief and dark, and shoot them at you; and if you inquire
the reason of what he has said, you will be hit by some other new-fangled
word, and will make no way with any of them, nor they with one another;
their great care is, not to allow of any settled principle either in their
arguments or in their minds, conceiving, as I imagine, that any such
principle would be stationary; for they are at war with the stationary, and
do what they can to drive it out everywhere.
SOCRATES: I suppose, Theodorus, that you have only seen them when they
were fighting, and have never stayed with them in time of peace, for they
are no friends of yours; and their peace doctrines are only communicated by
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