| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: SOCRATES: But as to the epithet 'wise,'--wise in what? In all things
small as well as great? For example, if a man shows the quality of
endurance in spending his money wisely, knowing that by spending he will
acquire more in the end, do you call him courageous?
LACHES: Assuredly not.
SOCRATES: Or, for example, if a man is a physician, and his son, or some
patient of his, has inflammation of the lungs, and begs that he may be
allowed to eat or drink something, and the other is firm and refuses; is
that courage?
LACHES: No; that is not courage at all, any more than the last.
SOCRATES: Again, take the case of one who endures in war, and is willing
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: her hand fastened together with a strong cord. One by one she laid the
children across her knee and severely beat them, expending a final burst of
energy on the Child-Who-Was-Tired, then returned to bed, with a comfortable
sense of her maternal duties in good working order for the day. Very
subdued, the three allowed themselves to be dressed and washed by the
Child, who even laced the boys' boots, having found through experience that
if left to themselves they hopped about for at least five minutes to find a
comfortable ledge for their foot, and then spat on their hands and broke
the bootlaces.
While she gave them their breakfast they became uproarious, and the baby
would not cease crying. When she filled the tin kettle with milk, tied on
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: wavering! To be sure, an ominous new superstition, a peculiar
narrowness of interpretation, attained supremacy precisely
thereby: the origin of an action was interpreted in the most
definite sense possible, as origin out of an INTENTION; people
were agreed in the belief that the value of an action lay in the
value of its intention. The intention as the sole origin and
antecedent history of an action: under the influence of this
prejudice moral praise and blame have been bestowed, and men have
judged and even philosophized almost up to the present day.--Is
it not possible, however, that the necessity may now have arisen
of again making up our minds with regard to the reversing and
Beyond Good and Evil |
