| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: character he parts company from the vain and impertinent talker in private
life, who is a loser of money, while he is a maker of it.
But there is another general division under which his art may be also
supposed to fall, and that is purification; and from purification is
descended education, and the new principle of education is to interrogate
men after the manner of Socrates, and make them teach themselves. Here
again we catch a glimpse rather of a Socratic or Eristic than of a Sophist
in the ordinary sense of the term. And Plato does not on this ground
reject the claim of the Sophist to be the true philosopher. One more
feature of the Eristic rather than of the Sophist is the tendency of the
troublesome animal to run away into the darkness of Not-being. Upon the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: between,--nothing that they could dwell upon with the slightest
satisfaction. Nor had their sleep entirely refreshed them. Their eyes
were not quite right, and their hair, though it was brushed, showed
fatigue of the nerves in a certain inclination to limpness and disorder.
"Epicharmos of Kos
Was covered with moss,"
remarked Billy.
"Thales and Zeno
Were duffers at keno,"
added Bertie.
In the hours of trial they would often express their education thus.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: himself.
He said nothing; he began to doubt whether he had really seen his
chief at Saint-Sulpice. Desplein would not have troubled himself
to tell Bianchon a lie, they knew each other too well; they had
already exchanged thoughts on quite equally serious subjects, and
discussed systems de natura rerum, probing or dissecting them
with the knife and scalpel of incredulity.
Three months went by. Bianchon did not attempt to follow the
matter up, though it remained stamped on his memory. One day that
year, one of the physicians of the Hotel-Dieu took Desplein by
the arm, as if to question him, in Bianchon's presence.
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