| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: the city; with what moderation did they order the war against the tyrants
in Eleusis, and in a manner how unlike what the other Hellenes expected!
And the reason of this gentleness was the veritable tie of blood, which
created among them a friendship as of kinsmen, faithful not in word only,
but in deed. And we ought also to remember those who then fell by one
another's hands, and on such occasions as these to reconcile them with
sacrifices and prayers, praying to those who have power over them, that
they may be reconciled even as we are reconciled. For they did not attack
one another out of malice or enmity, but they were unfortunate. And that
such was the fact we ourselves are witnesses, who are of the same race with
them, and have mutually received and granted forgiveness of what we have
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: from such examples forming a general notion of falsehood, the mind of the
Greek thinker was lost in the mazes of the Eleatic philosophy. And the
greater importance which Plato attributes to this fallacy, compared with
others, is due to the influence which the Eleatic philosophy exerted over
him. He sees clearly to a certain extent; but he has not yet attained a
complete mastery over the ideas of his predecessors--they are still ends to
him, and not mere instruments of thought. They are too rough-hewn to be
harmonized in a single structure, and may be compared to rocks which
project or overhang in some ancient city's walls. There are many such
imperfect syncretisms or eclecticisms in the history of philosophy. A
modern philosopher, though emancipated from scholastic notions of essence
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: didn't, because she was in love with me too. She thought I knew a lot
because I knew different things from her. . . . Well, there I was,
'way off my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and
all of a sudden I didn't care. What was the use of doing great
things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going
to do?" On the last afternoon before he went abroad, he sat with Daisy
in his arms for a long, silent time. It was a cold fall day, with fire
in the room and her cheeks flushed. Now and then she moved and he
changed his arm a little, and once he kissed her dark shining hair. The
afternoon had made them tranquil for a while, as if to give them a deep
memory for the long parting the next day promised. They had never been
The Great Gatsby |
