| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: praeconem prohibatur orator"; "Apol." 4; Plat. "Apol." 38 D, E.
[8] See Grote, "H. G." viii. p. 663 foll.
These views he frequently maintained in conversation, now with one and
now with another, and one particular discussion with Hippias of
Elis[9] on the topic of justice and uprightness has come to my
knowledge.[10]
[9] For this famous person see Cob. "Pros. Xen." s.n.; Plat. "Hipp.
maj." 148; Quint. xii. 11, 21; Grote, "H. G." viii. 524.
[10] Or, "I can personally vouch for."
Hippias had just arrived at Athens after a long absence, and chanced
to be present when Socrates was telling some listeners how astonishing
The Memorabilia |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: as to be able to get from my bunk to the scuttle, and see the green
seas trying to keep pace with us. I judged the schooner was running
before the wind. Montgomery--that was the name of the flaxen-haired man--
came in again as I stood there, and I asked him for some clothes.
He lent me some duck things of his own, for those I had worn in the boat
had been thrown overboard. They were rather loose for me, for he was
large and long in his limbs. He told me casually that the captain
was three-parts drunk in his own cabin. As I assumed the clothes,
I began asking him some questions about the destination of the ship.
He said the ship was bound to Hawaii, but that it had to land
him first.
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: be a figure of speech. One person may have introduced a new custom into
the formation or pronunciation of a word; he may have been imitated by
others, and the custom, or form, or accent, or quantity, or rhyme which he
introduced in a single word may have become the type on which many other
words or inflexions of words were framed, and may have quickly ran through
a whole language. For like the other gifts which nature has bestowed upon
man, that of speech has been conveyed to him through the medium, not of the
many, but of the few, who were his 'law-givers'--'the legislator with the
dialectician standing on his right hand,' in Plato's striking image, who
formed the manners of men and gave them customs, whose voice and look and
behaviour, whose gesticulations and other peculiarities were instinctively
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