| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: The modern philosopher has always been taught the lesson which he still
imperfectly learns, that he must disengage himself from the influence of
words. Nor are there wanting in Plato, who was himself too often the
victim of them, impressive admonitions that we should regard not words but
things (States.). But upon the whole, the ancients, though not entirely
dominated by them, were much more subject to the influence of words than
the moderns. They had no clear divisions of colours or substances; even
the four elements were undefined; the fields of knowledge were not parted
off. They were bringing order out of disorder, having a small grain of
experience mingled in a confused heap of a priori notions. And yet,
probably, their first impressions, the illusions and mirages of their
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: writes, "that Betterton had no part in it." It is by such a
zeal and loyalty to those who labour for his delight that the
amateur grows worthy of the artist. And it should be kept in
mind that, not only in art, but in morals, Pepys rejoiced to
recognise his betters. There was not one speck of envy in
the whole human-hearted egotist.
RESPECTABILITY.
When writers inveigh against respectability, in the present
degraded meaning of the word, they are usually suspected of a
taste for clay pipes and beer cellars; and their performances
are thought to hail from the OWL'S NEST of the comedy. They
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: the first; and it will be found that an elective authority which
is not subject to judicial power will, sooner or later, either
elude all control or be destroyed. The courts of justice are the
only possible medium between the central power and the
administrative bodies; they alone can compel the elected
functionary to obey, without violating the rights of the elector.
The extension of judicial power in the political world ought
therefore to be in the exact ratio of the extension of elective
offices: if these two institutions do not go hand in hand, the
State must fall into anarchy or into subjection.
It has always been remarked that habits of legal business do
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