| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: case of resistance is reduced to a computation of the
quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side, and of
the probability and expense of redressing it on the other."
Of this, he says, every man shall judge for himself.
But Paley appears never to have contemplated those cases
to which the rule of expediency does not apply, in which
a people, as well and an individual, must do justice, cost
what it may. If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a
drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.
This, according to Paley, would be inconvenient.
But he that would save his life, in such a case, shall lose it.
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: Mr. Elton was to take the drawing to London, chuse the frame,
and give the directions; and Emma thought she could so pack it
as to ensure its safety without much incommoding him, while he
seemed mostly fearful of not being incommoded enough.
"What a precious deposit!" said he with a tender sigh, as he
received it.
"This man is almost too gallant to be in love," thought Emma.
"I should say so, but that I suppose there may be a hundred different
ways of being in love. He is an excellent young man, and will suit
Harriet exactly; it will be an `Exactly so,' as he says himself;
but he does sigh and languish, and study for compliments rather more
Emma |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: understand, and the ridiculous interpretation of Homer, are entirely in the
spirit of Plato (compare Protag; Ion; Apol.). The characters are ill-
drawn. Socrates assumes the 'superior person' and preaches too much, while
Alcibiades is stupid and heavy-in-hand. There are traces of Stoic
influence in the general tone and phraseology of the Dialogue (compare opos
melesei tis...kaka: oti pas aphron mainetai): and the writer seems to
have been acquainted with the 'Laws' of Plato (compare Laws). An incident
from the Symposium is rather clumsily introduced, and two somewhat
hackneyed quotations (Symp., Gorg.) recur. The reference to the death of
Archelaus as having occurred 'quite lately' is only a fiction, probably
suggested by the Gorgias, where the story of Archelaus is told, and a
|
