| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: and Hesiod, if not banished from the state, or whipped out of the assembly,
as Heracleitus more rudely proposed, at any rate were not to be appealed to
as authorities in religion; and he is ready to defend his conduct by the
examples of the gods. These are the very tales which Socrates cannot
abide; and his dislike of them, as he suspects, has branded him with the
reputation of impiety. Here is one answer to the question, 'Why Socrates
was put to death,' suggested by the way. Another is conveyed in the words,
'The Athenians do not care about any man being thought wise until he begins
to make other men wise; and then for some reason or other they are angry:'
which may be said to be the rule of popular toleration in most other
countries, and not at Athens only. In the course of the argument Socrates
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: permitted, in one of his slow absences. "I've often thought of it,
but never to feel that I could guess it. And you see the
consideration with which I've treated you in never asking till now."
"Now then why DO you ask?"
"To show you how I miss you when you're not here, and what it does
for me."
"It doesn't seem to have done," she laughed, "all it might!
However," she added, "if you've really never guessed the truth I'll
tell it you."
"I've never guessed it," Strether declared.
"Never?"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: of goodness the invoked action of which is to raise the artistic
faith to its maximum. Then truly, I hold, one's theme may be said
to shine, and that of "The Ambassadors," I confess, wore this glow
for me from beginning to end. Fortunately thus I am able to
estimate this as, frankly, quite the best, "all round," of all my
productions; any failure of that justification would have made
such an extreme of complacency publicly fatuous.
I recall then in this connexion no moment of subjective
intermittence, never one of those alarms as for a suspected hollow
beneath one's feet, a felt ingratitude in the scheme adopted,
under which confidence fails and opportunity seems but to mock.
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