| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: can be taught; whether the virtues are one or many. (iv) They have a want
of depth, when compared with the dialogues of the middle and later period;
and a youthful beauty and grace which is wanting in the later ones. (v)
Their resemblance to one another; in all the three boyhood has a great
part. These reasons have various degrees of weight in determining their
place in the catalogue of the Platonic writings, though they are not
conclusive. No arrangement of the Platonic dialogues can be strictly
chronological. The order which has been adopted is intended mainly for the
convenience of the reader; at the same time, indications of the date
supplied either by Plato himself or allusions found in the dialogues have
not been lost sight of. Much may be said about this subject, but the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: Just at that moment a man appeared a few paces from the jetty, to the
surprise of the skipper, who had heard no sound of footsteps. The
traveler seemed to have sprung up from the earth, like a peasant who
had laid himself down on the ground to wait till the boat should
start, and had slept till the sound of the horn awakened him. Was he a
thief? or some one belonging to the custom-house or the police?
As soon as the man appeared on the jetty to which the boat was moored,
seven persons who were standing in the stern of the shallop hastened
to sit down on the benches, so as to leave no room for the newcomer.
It was the swift and instinctive working of the aristocratic spirit,
an impulse of exclusiveness that comes from the rich man's heart. Four
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: My feet sinking in the rich pile of the carpet, I came through
the gloom of the great apartment in to the patch of light,
and, Karamaneh beside me, stood looking down upon the boy.
It was Aziz, her brother; dead so far as Western lore had power
to judge, but kept alive in that deathlike trance by the uncanny
power of the Chinese doctor.
"Be quick," she said; "be quick! Awaken him! I am afraid."
From the case which I carried I took out a needle-syringe
and a phial containing a small quantity of amber-hued liquid.
It was a drug not to be found in the British Pharmacopoeia.
Of its constitution I knew nothing. Although I had had
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
