| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: escape. Crito, who is a disinterested person not having the fear of death
before his eyes, shall answer this for him. Before he was condemned they
had often held discussions, in which they agreed that no man should either
do evil, or return evil for evil, or betray the right. Are these
principles to be altered because the circumstances of Socrates are altered?
Crito admits that they remain the same. Then is his escape consistent with
the maintenance of them? To this Crito is unable or unwilling to reply.
Socrates proceeds:--Suppose the Laws of Athens to come and remonstrate with
him: they will ask 'Why does he seek to overturn them?' and if he replies,
'they have injured him,' will not the Laws answer, 'Yes, but was that the
agreement? Has he any objection to make to them which would justify him in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: affectionately, "I am far from willing; but if you are resolved to
go," says she, "rather than I would be the only hindrance, I will
go with you: for though I think it a most preposterous thing for
one of your years, and in your condition, yet, if it must be," said
she, again weeping, "I would not leave you; for if it be of Heaven
you must do it, there is no resisting it; and if Heaven make it
your duty to go, He will also make it mine to go with you, or
otherwise dispose of me, that I may not obstruct it."
This affectionate behaviour of my wife's brought me a little out of
the vapours, and I began to consider what I was doing; I corrected
my wandering fancy, and began to argue with myself sedately what
Robinson Crusoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: was gloomy and absorbed, yet always he returned there. Some
inexplicable power brought him back to his dismal house in the rue du
Murier. Like a snail, whose life is so firmly attached to its shell,
he admitted to the king that he was never at ease except under the
bolts and behind the vermiculated stones of his little bastille; yet
he knew very well that whenever Louis XI. died, the place would be the
most dangerous spot on earth for him.
"The devil is amusing himself at the expense of our crony, the
torconnier," said Louis XI. to his barber, a few days before the
festival of All-Saints. "He says he has been robbed again, but he
can't hang anybody this time unless he hangs himself. The old vagabond
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