| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: again, exceptions are taken. For there must be a virtue of those who obey,
as well as of those who command; and the power of command must be justly or
not unjustly exercised. Meno is very ready to admit that justice is
virtue: 'Would you say virtue or a virtue, for there are other virtues,
such as courage, temperance, and the like; just as round is a figure, and
black and white are colours, and yet there are other figures and other
colours. Let Meno take the examples of figure and colour, and try to
define them.' Meno confesses his inability, and after a process of
interrogation, in which Socrates explains to him the nature of a 'simile in
multis,' Socrates himself defines figure as 'the accompaniment of colour.'
But some one may object that he does not know the meaning of the word
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: Until his army be dismiss'd from him.
SOMERSET.
My lord,
I'll yield myself to prison willingly,
Or unto death, to do my country good.
KING.
In any case, be not too rough in terms,
For he is fierce and cannot brook hard language.
BUCKINGHAM.
I will, my lord, and doubt not so to deal
As all things shall redound unto your good.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman: undiscovered country to explore, and in it the sweetest wisdom
and understanding. It was as if I had come to some new place
and people, with a desire to eat at all hours, and no other
interests in particular; and as if my hosts, instead of merely
saying, "You shall not eat," had presently aroused in me a lively
desire for music, for pictures, for games, for exercise, for playing
in the water, for running some ingenious machine; and, in the
multitude of my satisfactions, I forgot the one point which was
not satisfied, and got along very well until mealtime.
One of the cleverest and most ingenious of these tricks was
only clear to me many years after, when we were so wholly at one
Herland |
