| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: indeed I think that Euripides may have been right in saying,
'Who knows if life be not death and death life;'
and that we are very likely dead; I have heard a philosopher say that at
this moment we are actually dead, and that the body (soma) is our tomb
(sema (compare Phaedr.)), and that the part of the soul which is the seat
of the desires is liable to be tossed about by words and blown up and down;
and some ingenious person, probably a Sicilian or an Italian, playing with
the word, invented a tale in which he called the soul--because of its
believing and make-believe nature--a vessel (An untranslatable pun,--dia to
pithanon te kai pistikon onomase pithon.), and the ignorant he called the
uninitiated or leaky, and the place in the souls of the uninitiated in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie: "Can't it, though? It can last long enough for us never to be
able to hold up our heads again."
"No, no, you're getting morbid on the subject."
"Enough to make a man morbid, to be stalked by beastly
journalists and stared at by gaping moon-faced idiots, wherever
he goes! But there's worse than that."
"What?"
John lowered his voice:
"Have you ever thought, Hastings--it's a nightmare to me-- who
did it? I can't help feeling sometimes it must have been an
accident. Because--because--who could have done it? Now
The Mysterious Affair at Styles |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: to be superior in wisdom and courage, and any other virtue, demean
themselves in this way, how shameful is their conduct! I have seen men of
reputation, when they have been condemned, behaving in the strangest
manner: they seemed to fancy that they were going to suffer something
dreadful if they died, and that they could be immortal if you only allowed
them to live; and I think that such are a dishonour to the state, and that
any stranger coming in would have said of them that the most eminent men of
Athens, to whom the Athenians themselves give honour and command, are no
better than women. And I say that these things ought not to be done by
those of us who have a reputation; and if they are done, you ought not to
permit them; you ought rather to show that you are far more disposed to
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