| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart; and when one
of the halves died and the other survived, the survivor sought another
mate, man or woman as we call them,--being the sections of entire men or
women,--and clung to that. They were being destroyed, when Zeus in pity of
them invented a new plan: he turned the parts of generation round to the
front, for this had not been always their position, and they sowed the seed
no longer as hitherto like grasshoppers in the ground, but in one another;
and after the transposition the male generated in the female in order that
by the mutual embraces of man and woman they might breed, and the race
might continue; or if man came to man they might be satisfied, and rest,
and go their ways to the business of life: so ancient is the desire of one
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: years of age at his trial in 399 (see Apology), he could not have been a
young man at any time after the battle of Delium.
LACHES, OR COURAGE.
by
Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE:
Lysimachus, son of Aristides.
Melesias, son of Thucydides.
Their sons.
Nicias, Laches, Socrates.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: produced by the perfect calm, the stillness which prevailed, by the
unpretentious unity of color, the keeping of the picture, in the words
a painter might use. A certain nobleness in the details, the exquisite
cleanliness of the furniture, and a perfect concord of men and things,
all brought the word "suavity" to the lips.
Few persons were admitted to the rooms used by the Marquis and his two
sons, whose life might perhaps seem mysterious to their neighbors. In
a wing towards the street, on the third floor, there are three large
rooms which had been left in the state of dilapidation and grotesque
bareness to which they had been reduced by the printing works. These
three rooms, devoted to the evolution of the Picturesque History of
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