| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: he does not know; than which nothing, as I think, can be more irrational.
And yet, after finding us so easy and good-natured, the enquiry is still
unable to discover the truth; but mocks us to a degree, and has gone out of
its way to prove the inutility of that which we admitted only by a sort of
supposition and fiction to be the true definition of temperance or wisdom:
which result, as far as I am concerned, is not so much to be lamented, I
said. But for your sake, Charmides, I am very sorry--that you, having such
beauty and such wisdom and temperance of soul, should have no profit or
good in life from your wisdom and temperance. And still more am I grieved
about the charm which I learned with so much pain, and to so little profit,
from the Thracian, for the sake of a thing which is nothing worth. I think
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: illusions, and alter the proportions of figures, in order to adapt their
works to the eye. And the Sophist also uses illusions, and his imitations
are apparent and not real. But how can anything be an appearance only?
Here arises a difficulty which has always beset the subject of appearances.
For the argument is asserting the existence of not-being. And this is what
the great Parmenides was all his life denying in prose and also in verse.
'You will never find,' he says, 'that not-being is.' And the words prove
themselves! Not-being cannot be attributed to any being; for how can any
being be wholly abstracted from being? Again, in every predication there
is an attribution of singular or plural. But number is the most real of
all things, and cannot be attributed to not-being. Therefore not-being
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lemorne Versus Huell by Elizabeth Drew Stoddard: had sent for my fare thither. I arrived at her house in Bond Street
at 7 A.M., and found her man James in conversation with the
milkman. He informed me that Miss Huell was very bad, and that the
housekeeper was still in bed. I supposed that Aunt Eliza was in bed
also, but I had hardly entered the house when I heard her bell ring
as she only could ring it--with an impatient jerk.
"She wants hot milk," said James, "and the man has just come."
I laid my bonnet down, and went to the kitchen. Saluting the
cook, who was an old acquaintance, and who told me that the "divil"
had been in the range that morning, I took a pan, into which I
poured some milk, and held it over the gaslight till it was hot;
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