| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: is not rhetoric; nothing on that subject is to be found in the endless
treatises of rhetoric, however prolific in hard names. When Plato has
sufficiently put them to the test of ridicule he touches, as with the point
of a needle, the real error, which is the confusion of preliminary
knowledge with creative power. No attainments will provide the speaker
with genius; and the sort of attainments which can alone be of any value
are the higher philosophy and the power of psychological analysis, which is
given by dialectic, but not by the rules of the rhetoricians.
In this latter portion of the Dialogue there are many texts which may help
us to speak and to think. The names dialectic and rhetoric are passing out
of use; we hardly examine seriously into their nature and limits, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: seemed he understood.
Now there's that little chap of mine, just full of
life and fun,
Comes up to me with solemn face to tell the
bad he's done.
It's natural for any boy to be a roguish elf,
He hasn't time to stop and think and figure for
himself,
And though the womenfolks insist that I should
take a hand,
They've never been a boy themselves, and they
A Heap O' Livin' |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: My Philip, in the night-time sing
This song of the Lord I send to thee;
And I will sing it for thy sake,
Until our answering voices make
A glorious antiphony,
And choral chant of victory!
PART THREE
THE NEW ENGLAND TRAGEDIES
JOHN ENDICOTT
DRAMATIS PERSONAE.
JOHN ENDICOTT Governor.
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