| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: are they not better in their mistakes than those who commit them
involuntarily?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And should we not desire to have our own minds in the best state
possible?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And will our minds be better if they do wrong and make mistakes
voluntarily or involuntarily?
HIPPIAS: O, Socrates, it would be a monstrous thing to say that those who
do wrong voluntarily are better than those who do wrong involuntarily!
SOCRATES: And yet that appears to be the only inference.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: fastened, they are of great value, for they are really beautiful works of
art. Now this is an illustration of the nature of true opinions: while
they abide with us they are beautiful and fruitful, but they run away out
of the human soul, and do not remain long, and therefore they are not of
much value until they are fastened by the tie of the cause; and this
fastening of them, friend Meno, is recollection, as you and I have agreed
to call it. But when they are bound, in the first place, they have the
nature of knowledge; and, in the second place, they are abiding. And this
is why knowledge is more honourable and excellent than true opinion,
because fastened by a chain.
MENO: What you are saying, Socrates, seems to be very like the truth.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: The tale of the loss of the TRAVELLER is almost a replica of
that of the ELIZABETH of Stromness; like the ELIZABETH she
came as far as Kinnaird Head, was then surprised by a storm,
driven back to Orkney, and bilged and sank on the island of
Flotta. It seems it was about the dusk of the day when the
ship struck, and many of the crew and passengers were drowned.
About the same hour, my grandfather was in his office at the
writing-table; and the room beginning to darken, he laid down
his pen and fell asleep. In a dream he saw the door open and
George Peebles come in, `reeling to and fro, and staggering
like a drunken man,' with water streaming from his head and
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