| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: description of the relations of Socrates and Alcibiades. Like the Lesser
Hippias and the Menexenus, it is to be compared to the earlier writings of
Plato. The motive of the piece may, perhaps, be found in that passage of
the Symposium in which Alcibiades describes himself as self-convicted by
the words of Socrates. For the disparaging manner in which Schleiermacher
has spoken of this dialogue there seems to be no sufficient foundation. At
the same time, the lesson imparted is simple, and the irony more
transparent than in the undoubted dialogues of Plato. We know, too, that
Alcibiades was a favourite thesis, and that at least five or six dialogues
bearing this name passed current in antiquity, and are attributed to
contemporaries of Socrates and Plato. (1) In the entire absence of real
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: The pendant stone itself, a fine gem though flawed, I gave in after
years to her gracious majesty Queen Elizabeth.
On board the English ship they thought me a Spanish adventurer who
had made moneys in the Indies, and I did not undeceive them, since
I would be left to my own company for a while that I might prepare
my mind to return to ways of thought and life that it had long
forgotten. Therefore I sat apart like some proud don, saying
little but listening much, and learning all I could of what had
chanced in England since I left it some twenty years before.
At length our voyage came to an end, and on a certain twelfth of
June I found myself in the mighty city of London that I had never
Montezuma's Daughter |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Mercy, or, we may rather say, the world's heavy hand had so
ordained her, when neither the world nor she looked forward to
this result. The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such
helpfulness was found in her -- so much power to do, and power to
sympathise -- that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A
by its original signification. They said that it meant Abel, so
strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman's strength.
It was only the darkened house that could contain her. When
sunshine came again, she was not there. Her shadow had faded
across the threshold. The helpful inmate had departed, without
The Scarlet Letter |
