| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: is no answer given, for Gorgias is soon made to contradict himself by
Socrates, and the argument is transferred to the hands of his disciple
Polus, who rushes to the defence of his master. The answer has at last to
be given by Socrates himself, but before he can even explain his meaning to
Polus, he must enlighten him upon the great subject of shams or flatteries.
When Polus finds his favourite art reduced to the level of cookery, he
replies that at any rate rhetoricians, like despots, have great power.
Socrates denies that they have any real power, and hence arise the three
paradoxes already mentioned. Although they are strange to him, Polus is at
last convinced of their truth; at least, they seem to him to follow
legitimately from the premises. Thus the second act of the dialogue
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: To endure another like it -- and another -- till I'm dead?"
"Has your tame cat sold a picture? -- or more likely had a windfall?
Or for God's sake, what's broke loose? Have you a bee-hive in your head?
A little more of this from you will not be easy hearing.
Do you know that? Understand it, if you do; for if you won't. . . .
What the devil are you saying! Make believe you never said it,
And I'll say I never heard it. . . . Oh, you. . . . If you. . . ."
"If I don't?"
"There are men who say there's reason hidden somewhere in a woman,
But I doubt if God himself remembers where the key was hung."
"He may not; for they say that even God himself is growing.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Frances Waldeaux by Rebecca Davis: were left on flat ground to consort with common poultry.
CHAPTER VI
Miss Vance led her party slowly through Scotland and down
again to London. Mrs. Waldeaux went with them. The
girls secretly laughed together at her fine indomitable
politeness, and her violent passion for the Stuarts, and
hate of the Roundheads. But Mr. Perry was bored by her.
"What is it to us," he said, "that Queen Mary paddled
over this lake, or Cromwell's soldiers whitewashed that
fresco? Give me a clean, new American church, anyhow,
before all of your mouldy, tomby cathedrals. These
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