| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: Socrates draws out the latter by a new sort of irony, which is sometimes
adopted in talking to children, and consists in asking a leading question
which can only be answered in a sense contrary to the intention of the
question: 'Your father and mother of course allow you to drive the
chariot?' 'No they do not.' When Menexenus returns, the serious dialectic
begins. He is described as 'very pugnacious,' and we are thus prepared for
the part which a mere youth takes in a difficult argument. But Plato has
not forgotten dramatic propriety, and Socrates proposes at last to refer
the question to some older person.
SOME QUESTIONS RELATING TO FRIENDSHIP.
The subject of friendship has a lower place in the modern than in the
Lysis |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse
behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.
And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in
mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous
foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of
boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and
silenced: is there not something brave and spirited in such a
termination? and does not life go down with a better grace,
foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably
straggling to an end in sandy deltas? When the Greeks made
their fine saying that those whom the gods love die young, I
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: "Distinction of Sides implying Distinction of Colour"; and when
all others had succumbed to the fascinations of corporal decoration,
the Priests and the Women alone still remained pure from
the pollution of paint.
Immoral, licentious, anarchical, unscientific -- call them
by what names you will -- yet, from an aesthetic point of view,
those ancient days of the Colour Revolt were the glorious childhood of
Art in Flatland -- a childhood, alas, that never ripened into manhood,
nor even reached the blossom of youth. To live was then in itself
a delight, because living implied seeing. Even at a small party,
the company was a pleasure to behold; the richly varied hues
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
