| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: looking from above upon human life; and some think nothing of them, and
others can never think enough; and sometimes they appear as statesmen, and
sometimes as sophists; and then, again, to many they seem to be no better
than madmen. I should like to ask our Eleatic friend, if he would tell us,
what is thought about them in Italy, and to whom the terms are applied.
THEODORUS: What terms?
SOCRATES: Sophist, statesman, philosopher.
THEODORUS: What is your difficulty about them, and what made you ask?
SOCRATES: I want to know whether by his countrymen they are regarded as
one or two; or do they, as the names are three, distinguish also three
kinds, and assign one to each name?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: tone. But indeed there was no one present who was not very proud of
being himself.
Mademoiselle des Touches always insists on her guests remaining at
table till they leave, having frequently remarked the change which a
move produces in the spirit of a party. Between the dining-room and
the drawing-room the charm is destroyed. According to Sterne, the
ideas of an author after shaving are different from those he had
before. If Sterne is right, may it not be boldly asserted that the
frame of mind of a party at table is not the same as that of the same
persons returned to the drawing-room? The atmosphere is not heady, the
eye no longer contemplates the brilliant disorder of the dessert, lost
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: magnificence was as planless as the chances of crag and gorge,
their casualty enhanced by the smoke and confusion of still
unsubdued and spreading conflagrations. In the sky soared the
German airships like beings in a different, entirely more orderly
world, all oriented to the same angle of the horizon, uniform in
build and appearance, moving accurately with one purpose as a
pack of wolves will move, distributed with the most precise and
effectual co-operation.
It dawned upon Bert that hardly a third of the fleet was visible.
The others had gone upon errands he could not imagine, beyond the
compass of that great circle of earth. and sky. He wondered, but
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