| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: understand, and in particular of virtue. For who is there, but you?--who
not only claim to be a good man and a gentleman, for many are this, and yet
have not the power of making others good--whereas you are not only good
yourself, but also the cause of goodness in others. Moreover such
confidence have you in yourself, that although other Sophists conceal their
profession, you proclaim in the face of Hellas that you are a Sophist or
teacher of virtue and education, and are the first who demanded pay in
return. How then can I do otherwise than invite you to the examination of
these subjects, and ask questions and consult with you? I must, indeed.
And I should like once more to have my memory refreshed by you about the
questions which I was asking you at first, and also to have your help in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: enthroned, then remember the poor creatures disinherited by fate,
whose intellects pine in an oppressive moral atmosphere, who die and
have never lived, knowing all the while what life might be; think of
the piercing eyes that have seen nothing, the delicate senses that
have only known the scent of poison flowers. Then tell in your song of
plants that wither in the depths of the forest, choked by twining
growths and rank, greedy vegetation, plants that have never been
kissed by the sunlight, and die, never having put forth a blossom. It
would be a terribly gloomy poem, would it not, a fanciful subject?
What a sublime poem might be made of the story of some daughter of the
desert transported to some cold, western clime, calling for her
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: In Palestine an empire to have wrought,
Where godliness might reign perpetual,
And none be left, that pilgrims might denay
To see Christ's tomb, and promised vows to pay.
XXIV
"What to this hour successively is done
Was full of peril, to our honor small,
Naught to our first designment, if we shun
The purposed end, or here lie fixed all.
What boots it us there wares to have begun,
Or Europe raised to make proud Asia thrall,
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