| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: mistaken, to rush wildly to conjecture touching the happiness or
wretchedness of people at first sight.
Now the nature of a tyrrany is such: it presents, nay flaunts, a show
of costliest possessions unfolded to the general gaze, which rivets
the attention;[3] but the real troubles in the souls of monarchs it
keeps concealed in those hid chambers where lie stowed away the
happiness and the unhappiness of mankind.
[3] There is some redundancy in the phraseology.
I repeat then, I little marvel that the multitude should be blinded in
this matter. But that you others also, you who are held to see with
the mind's eye more clearly than with the eye of sense the mass of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: a `Sancho' ever since she was born. That was a very happy breakfast,
though they didn't get any of it. And when they went away,
leaving comfort behind, I think there were not in all the city
four merrier people than the hungry little girls who gave away
their breakfasts and contented themselves with bread and milk
on Christmas morning.
"That's loving our neighbor better than ourselves, and I
like it," said Meg, as they set out their presents while their
mother was upstairs collecting clothes for the poor Hummels.
Not a very splendid show, but there was a great deal of
love done up in the few little bundles, and the tall vase of
Little Women |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: and there is a passing or process from one to the other of them?
Very true, he replied.
Well, and is there not an opposite of life, as sleep is the opposite of
waking?
True, he said.
And what is it?
Death, he answered.
And these, if they are opposites, are generated the one from the other, and
have there their two intermediate processes also?
Of course.
Now, said Socrates, I will analyze one of the two pairs of opposites which
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