| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: to define the meaning. Or, again, the opposite result is produced, when
the world refuses to allow some sect or body of men the possession of an
honourable name which they have assumed, or applies it to them only in
mockery or irony.
The term 'Sophist' is one of those words of which the meaning has been both
contracted and enlarged. Passages may be quoted from Herodotus and the
tragedians, in which the word is used in a neutral sense for a contriver or
deviser or inventor, without including any ethical idea of goodness or
badness. Poets as well as philosophers were called Sophists in the fifth
century before Christ. In Plato himself the term is applied in the sense
of a 'master in art,' without any bad meaning attaching to it (Symp.;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan: see I bear the accident with Calmness.
LADY SNEERWELL. Because the Disappointment hasn't reached your
HEART--your interest only attached you to Maria--had you felt for
her--what I have for that ungrateful Libertine--neither your Temper
nor Hypocrisy could prevent your showing the sharpness of your
Vexation.
SURFACE. But why should your Reproaches fall on me for this
Disappointment?
LADY SNEERWELL. Are not you the cause of it? what had you to bate
in your Pursuit of Maria to pervert Lady Teazle by the way.--had you
not a sufficient field for your Roguery in blinding Sir Peter and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: almost tearfully. 'Surely,' he said gently, 'there will
be enough left to square the foreyard.'
"The old chap, it seems, was in his own berth, wind-
ing up the chronometers, when the shock sent him spin-
ning. Immediately it occurred to him--as he said after-
wards--that the ship had struck something, and he ran
out into the cabin. There, he saw, the cabin-table had
vanished somewhere. The deck being blown up, it had
fallen down into the lazarette of course. Where we had
our breakfast that morning he saw only a great hole in
the floor. This appeared to him so awfully mysterious,
Youth |
