| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: perpendicular lines of the language; and the opposition or inference is
often much more one of words than of ideas. But modern languages have
rubbed off this adversative and inferential form: they have fewer links of
connection, there is less mortar in the interstices, and they are content
to place sentences side by side, leaving their relation to one another to
be gathered from their position or from the context. The difficulty of
preserving the effect of the Greek is increased by the want of adversative
and inferential particles in English, and by the nice sense of tautology
which characterizes all modern languages. We cannot have two 'buts' or two
'fors' in the same sentence where the Greek repeats (Greek). There is a
similar want of particles expressing the various gradations of objective
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: form shot by him; Rosalind, her arms spread in a beautiful swan
dive, had sailed through the air into the clear water.
"Of course I had to go, after thatand I nearly killed myself. I
thought I was pretty good to even try it. Nobody else in the
party tried it. Well, afterward Rosalind had the nerve to ask me
why I stooped over when I dove. 'It didn't make it any easier,'
she said, 'it just took all the courage out of it.' I ask you,
what can a man do with a girl like that? Unnecessary, I call it."
Gillespie failed to understand why Amory was smiling delightedly
all through lunch. He thought perhaps he was one of these hollow
optimists.
This Side of Paradise |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: STRANGER: When we speak of something as not great, does the expression
seem to you to imply what is little any more than what is equal?
THEAETETUS: Certainly not.
STRANGER: The negative particles, ou and me, when prefixed to words, do
not imply opposition, but only difference from the words, or more correctly
from the things represented by the words, which follow them.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: There is another point to be considered, if you do not object.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: The nature of the other appears to me to be divided into
fractions like knowledge.
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