| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: frame of man, or by the Boeotians and Eleans for encouraging male loves;
(7) the ruling passion of Socrates for dialectics, who will argue with
Agathon instead of making a speech, and will only speak at all upon the
condition that he is allowed to speak the truth. We may note also the
touch of Socratic irony, (8) which admits of a wide application and reveals
a deep insight into the world:--that in speaking of holy things and persons
there is a general understanding that you should praise them, not that you
should speak the truth about them--this is the sort of praise which
Socrates is unable to give. Lastly, (9) we may remark that the banquet is
a real banquet after all, at which love is the theme of discourse, and huge
quantities of wine are drunk.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: We, conscious of what temper you are built,
Came all in haste to hinder wrong, but fell
Into his father's hands, who has this night,
You lying close upon his territory,
Slipt round and in the dark invested you,
And here he keeps me hostage for his son.'
The second was my father's running thus:
'You have our son: touch not a hair of his head:
Render him up unscathed: give him your hand:
Cleave to your contract: though indeed we hear
You hold the woman is the better man;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: concern and trouble!"
"Never mind that. It is not important."
"On the contrary; it is the most important part of what you tell me.
It is the rest that is unimportant."
"Do you realize that they have come to arrest you?" she asked him,
with increasing impatience. "You are wanted for sedition, and upon
a warrant from M. de Lesdiguieres."
"Sedition?" quoth he, and his thoughts flew to that business at
Nantes. It was impossible they could have had news of it in Rennes
and acted upon it in so short a time.
"Yes, sedition. The sedition of that wicked speech of yours at
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