| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: nothing after death, still, during the short time that remains, I shall not
distress my friends with lamentations, and my ignorance will not last, but
will die with me, and therefore no harm will be done. This is the state of
mind, Simmias and Cebes, in which I approach the argument. And I would ask
you to be thinking of the truth and not of Socrates: agree with me, if I
seem to you to be speaking the truth; or if not, withstand me might and
main, that I may not deceive you as well as myself in my enthusiasm, and
like the bee, leave my sting in you before I die.
And now let us proceed, he said. And first of all let me be sure that I
have in my mind what you were saying. Simmias, if I remember rightly, has
fears and misgivings whether the soul, although a fairer and diviner thing
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: people on the beach, and the girls in white duck skirts; and look
up there by the veranda--let me take the glass--yes, there's a
tally-ho coach. Isn't it queer to get back to this sort of thing
after Magdalena Bay and the beach-combers?"
Moran spun the wheel without reply, and gave an order to Jim to
ease off the foresheet.
XII
NEW CONDITIONS
The winter season at the Hotel del Coronado had been unusually gay
that year, and the young lady who wrote the society news in diary
form for one of the San Francisco weekly papers had held forth at
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: to us who in a distant country read the narrative of their emotions after
more than two thousand years have passed away.
The two principal interlocutors are Simmias and Cebes, the disciples of
Philolaus the Pythagorean philosopher of Thebes. Simmias is described in
the Phaedrus as fonder of an argument than any man living; and Cebes,
although finally persuaded by Socrates, is said to be the most incredulous
of human beings. It is Cebes who at the commencement of the Dialogue asks
why 'suicide is held to be unlawful,' and who first supplies the doctrine
of recollection in confirmation of the pre-existence of the soul. It is
Cebes who urges that the pre-existence does not necessarily involve the
future existence of the soul, as is shown by the illustration of the weaver
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