| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of
the gods.
EUTHYPHRO: I do not understand your meaning, Socrates.
SOCRATES: I will endeavour to explain: we, speak of carrying and we speak
of being carried, of leading and being led, seeing and being seen. You
know that in all such cases there is a difference, and you know also in
what the difference lies?
EUTHYPHRO: I think that I understand.
SOCRATES: And is not that which is beloved distinct from that which loves?
EUTHYPHRO: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Well; and now tell me, is that which is carried in this state of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: SOCRATES: Let us, Nicias and Laches, comply with the request of Lysimachus
and Melesias. There will be no harm in asking ourselves the question which
was first proposed to us: 'Who have been our own instructors in this sort
of training, and whom have we made better?' But the other mode of carrying
on the enquiry will bring us equally to the same point, and will be more
like proceeding from first principles. For if we knew that the addition of
something would improve some other thing, and were able to make the
addition, then, clearly, we must know how that about which we are advising
may be best and most easily attained. Perhaps you do not understand what I
mean. Then let me make my meaning plainer in this way. Suppose we knew
that the addition of sight makes better the eyes which possess this gift,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: sincere. They began to try their walks again, but it proved a lame
imitation, for these things, from the first, beginning or ending,
had been connected with their visits to the church. They had
either strolled away as they came out or gone in to rest on the
return. Stransom, besides, now faltered; he couldn't walk as of
old. The omission made everything false; it was a dire mutilation
of their lives. Our friend was frank and monotonous, making no
mystery of his remonstrance and no secret of his predicament. Her
response, whatever it was, always came to the same thing - an
implied invitation to him to judge, if he spoke of predicaments, of
how much comfort she had in hers. For him indeed was no comfort
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