| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: cheat yourself out of much life so. . . . ALL FABLES,
INDEED, HAVE THEIR MORALS; BUT THE INNOCENT ENJOY THE STORY."
V.
"The only obligation," says he, "which I have a right to
assume is to do at any time what I think right." "Why should
we ever go abroad, even across the way, to ask a neighbour's
advice?" "There is a nearer neighbour within, who is
incessantly telling us how we should behave. BUT WE WAIT FOR
THE NEIGHBOUR WITHOUT TO TELL US OF SOME FALSE, EASIER WAY."
"The greater part of what my neighbours call good I believe
in my soul to be bad." To be what we are, and to become what
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: having roofs formed out of the native rock. Some of their buildings were
simple, but in others they put together different stones, varying the
colour to please the eye, and to be a natural source of delight. The
entire circuit of the wall, which went round the outermost zone, they
covered with a coating of brass, and the circuit of the next wall they
coated with tin, and the third, which encompassed the citadel, flashed with
the red light of orichalcum. The palaces in the interior of the citadel
were constructed on this wise:--In the centre was a holy temple dedicated
to Cleito and Poseidon, which remained inaccessible, and was surrounded by
an enclosure of gold; this was the spot where the family of the ten princes
first saw the light, and thither the people annually brought the fruits of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: and ignorance. It rested upon tradition and authority. It had none of the
higher play of fancy which creates poetry; and where there is no true
poetry, neither can there be any good prose. It had no great characters,
and therefore it had no great writers. It was incapable of distinguishing
between words and things. It was so hopelessly below the ancient standard
of classical Greek art and literature that it had no power of understanding
or of valuing them. It is doubtful whether any Greek author was justly
appreciated in antiquity except by his own contemporaries; and this neglect
of the great authors of the past led to the disappearance of the larger
part of them, while the Greek fathers were mostly preserved. There is no
reason to suppose that, in the century before the taking of Constantinople,
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