| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: never says a word about them. Nor is he paid for giving instruction--that
is another mistaken notion:--he has nothing to teach. But he commends
Evenus for teaching virtue at such a 'moderate' rate as five minae.
Something of the 'accustomed irony,' which may perhaps be expected to sleep
in the ear of the multitude, is lurking here.
He then goes on to explain the reason why he is in such an evil name. That
had arisen out of a peculiar mission which he had taken upon himself. The
enthusiastic Chaerephon (probably in anticipation of the answer which he
received) had gone to Delphi and asked the oracle if there was any man
wiser than Socrates; and the answer was, that there was no man wiser. What
could be the meaning of this--that he who knew nothing, and knew that he
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: inhuman manner; that he had applied to him in order that he might, in
some way, by his intermediation--that he might enter into
correspondence with the chief of police, and find the cloak.
For some inexplicable reason this conduct seemed familiar to the
prominent personage. "What, my dear sir!" he said abruptly, "are you
not acquainted with etiquette? Where have you come from? Don't you
know how such matters are managed? You should first have entered a
complaint about this at the court below: it would have gone to the
head of the department, then to the chief of the division, then it
would have been handed over to the secretary, and the secretary would
have given it to me."
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: promises of marriage: yet other cases there were which came under an
article of the Code as to the abduction of minors; and but for
Chesnel's timely intervention, the new law would have been allowed to
take its brutal course, and it is hard to say where the Count might
have ended. Victurnien grew the bolder for these victories over
bourgeois justice. He was so accustomed to be pulled out of scrapes,
that he never thought twice before any prank. Courts of law, in his
opinion, were bugbears to frighten people who had no hold on him.
Things which he would have blamed in common people were for him only
pardonable amusements. His disposition to treat the new laws
cavalierly while obeying the maxims of a Code for aristocrats, his
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