| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: argument is unshaken as ever. And I should like to know whether I may say
the same of another proposition--that not life, but a good life, is to be
chiefly valued?
CRITO: Yes, that also remains unshaken.
SOCRATES: And a good life is equivalent to a just and honorable one--that
holds also?
CRITO: Yes, it does.
SOCRATES: From these premisses I proceed to argue the question whether I
ought or ought not to try and escape without the consent of the Athenians:
and if I am clearly right in escaping, then I will make the attempt; but if
not, I will abstain. The other considerations which you mention, of money
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne: frontier. For them it was simply misery.
At first there rose against this unusual measure a murmur
of protestation, a cry of despair, but this was quickly sup-
pressed by the presence of the Cossacks and agents of police.
Immediately, what might be called the exodus from the
immense plain began. The awnings in front of the stalls
were folded up; the theaters were taken to pieces; the fires
were put out; the acrobats' ropes were lowered; the old
broken-winded horses of the traveling vans came back from
their sheds. Agents and soldiers with whip or stick
stimulated the tardy ones, and made nothing of pulling
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that
fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not
on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV. was that he
thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his
error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result. All
the results of the mistakes of governments are quite admirable.
It is to be noted also that Individualism does not come to man with
any sickly cant about duty, which merely means doing what other
people want because they want it; or any hideous cant about self-
sacrifice, which is merely a survival of savage mutilation. In
fact, it does not come to man with any claims upon him at all. It
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