| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: did well to die! Why, what would have become
of her if Grigori Aleksandrovich had abandoned
her? And that is what would have happened,
sooner or later.
"During half the following day she was calm,
silent and docile, however much the doctor
tortured her with his fomentations and mixtures.
"'Good heavens!' I said to him, 'you know
you said yourself that she was certain to die,
so what is the good of all these preparations of
yours?'
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: 'Whose pleasure? The pleasure of yourself, or of your neighbour,--of the
individual, or of the world?' This little addition has changed the whole
aspect of the discussion: the same word is now supposed to include two
principles as widely different as benevolence and self-love. Some modern
writers have also distinguished between pleasure the test, and pleasure the
motive of actions. For the universal test of right actions (how I know
them) may not always be the highest or best motive of them (why I do them).
Socrates, as we learn from the Memorabilia of Xenophon, first drew
attention to the consequences of actions. Mankind were said by him to act
rightly when they knew what they were doing, or, in the language of the
Gorgias, 'did what they would.' He seems to have been the first who
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw: that, that I can suspect you of the smallest feeling for me except the
inevitable feeling of early youth for late age, or imagine that I have
any feeling for you except one of shrinking humiliation, I cant
understand.
HYPATIA. I dont blame you for falling in love with me. I shall be
grateful to you all my life for it, because that was the first time
that anything really interesting happened to me.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Do you mean to tell me that nothing of that kind had
ever happened before? that no man had ever--
HYPATIA. Oh, lots. Thats part of the routine of life here: the very
dullest part of it. The young man who comes a-courting is as familiar
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