| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: thinker or a writer, and though suggesting some interesting questions to
the scholar and critic, is of little importance to the general reader.
LESSER HIPPIAS
by
Plato (see Appendix I above)
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
INTRODUCTION.
The Lesser Hippias may be compared with the earlier dialogues of Plato, in
which the contrast of Socrates and the Sophists is most strongly exhibited.
Hippias, like Protagoras and Gorgias, though civil, is vain and boastful:
he knows all things; he can make anything, including his own clothes; he is
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: many animals. And you, and men in general, call by the term 'courageous'
actions which I call rash;--my courageous actions are wise actions.
LACHES: Behold, Socrates, how admirably, as he thinks, he dresses himself
out in words, while seeking to deprive of the honour of courage those whom
all the world acknowledges to be courageous.
NICIAS: Not so, Laches, but do not be alarmed; for I am quite willing to
say of you and also of Lamachus, and of many other Athenians, that you are
courageous and therefore wise.
LACHES: I could answer that; but I would not have you cast in my teeth
that I am a haughty Aexonian.
SOCRATES: Do not answer him, Laches; I rather fancy that you are not aware
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: England, in true fellowship with literature, was carved from my
design by an Irish sculptor.
You may perhaps think that no man ought to speak of disappointment,
to whom, even in one branch of labour, so much success was granted.
Had Mr. Woodward now been beside me, I had not so spoken; but his
gentle and passionate spirit was cut off from the fulfilment of its
purposes, and the work we did together is now become vain. It may
not be so in future; but the architecture we endeavoured to
introduce is inconsistent alike with the reckless luxury, the
deforming mechanism, and the squalid misery of modern cities; among
the formative fashions of the day, aided, especially in England, by
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