| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: that which has the effect. Think over all this, and, like a brave youth,
tell me--What is temperance?
After a moment's pause, in which he made a real manly effort to think, he
said: My opinion is, Socrates, that temperance makes a man ashamed or
modest, and that temperance is the same as modesty.
Very good, I said; and did you not admit, just now, that temperance is
noble?
Yes, certainly, he said.
And the temperate are also good?
Yes.
And can that be good which does not make men good?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: passages as these, because it was not possible to come at the
particulars, where sometimes the whole families where such things
happened were carried off by the distemper. But there were
innumerable cases of this kind which presented to the eye and the ear,
even in passing along the streets, as I have hinted above. Nor is it
easy to give any story of this or that family which there was not divers
parallel stories to be met with of the same kind.
But as I am now talking of the time when the plague raged at the
easternmost part of the town - how for a long time the people of those
parts had flattered themselves that they should escape, and how they
were surprised when it came upon them as it did; for, indeed, it came
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: ously confessed; that those which held and per-
suaded pressure of consciences, were commonly
interested therein., themselves, for their own ends.
Of Revenge
REVENGE is a kind of wild justice; which the
more man' s nature runs to, the more ought
law to weed it out. For as for the first wrong, it
doth but offend the law; but the revenge of that
wrong, putteth the law out of office. Certainly, in
taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy;
but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a
Essays of Francis Bacon |
