| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: far as it thinks it can. Wherever it has really diminished it, the
results have always been extremely good. The less punishment, the
less crime. When there is no punishment at all, crime will either
cease to exist, or, if it occurs, will be treated by physicians as
a very distressing form of dementia, to be cured by care and
kindness. For what are called criminals nowadays are not criminals
at all. Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime.
That indeed is the reason why our criminals are, as a class, so
absolutely uninteresting from any psychological point of view.
They are not marvellous Macbeths and terrible Vautrins. They are
merely what ordinary, respectable, commonplace people would be if
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: concerning whom Simonides himself wrote a votive couplet:
{'E meg' 'Athenaioisi phoos geneth' enik' 'Aristogeiton
'Ipparkhon kteine kai 'Armodios.}
But if you imagine that the tyrant, because he has more possessions
than the private person, does for that reason derive greater pleasure
from them, this is not so either, Simonides, but it is with tyrants as
with athletes. Just as the athlete feels no glow of satisfaction in
asserting his superiority over amateurs,[12] but annoyance rather when
he sustains defeat at the hands of any real antagonist; so, too, the
tyrant finds little consolation in the fact[13] that he is evidently
richer than the private citizen. What he feels is pain, when he
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: "But if you're really not up to it," Charlotte wavered.
"Very well! Very well!" Old Mr. Neave got up and went to join that little
old climbing fellow just as far as his dressing-room...
There young Charles was waiting for him. Carefully, as though everything
depended on it, he was tucking a towel round the hot-water can. Young
Charles had been a favourite of his ever since as a little red-faced boy he
had come into the house to look after the fires. Old Mr. Neave lowered
himself into the cane lounge by the window, stretched out his legs, and
made his little evening joke, "Dress him up, Charles!" And Charles,
breathing intensely and frowning, bent forward to take the pin out of his
tie.
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