| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: the majority of us, or the opinion of the one who had been trained and
exercised under a skilful master?
MELESIAS: The latter, Socrates; as would surely be reasonable.
SOCRATES: His one vote would be worth more than the vote of all us four?
MELESIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And for this reason, as I imagine,--because a good decision is
based on knowledge and not on numbers?
MELESIAS: To be sure.
SOCRATES: Must we not then first of all ask, whether there is any one of
us who has knowledge of that about which we are deliberating? If there is,
let us take his advice, though he be one only, and not mind the rest; if
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs: eastward march. Some few miles farther on he over-
took a party of deserting royalist soldiery, and from
them he easily, by dint of threats, elicited the informa-
tion he desired: the direction taken by the refugees
from the deserted castle, their number, and as close a
description of the party as the soldiers could give.
Again he was forced to change the direction of his
march, this time heading northward into Kent. It was
dark before he reached his destination, and saw before
him the familiar outlines of the castle of Roger de Ley-
bourn. This time the outlaw threw his fierce horde
The Outlaw of Torn |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: with their ideas; so that before long Provins began to talk of him as
a liberal ecclesiastic. As soon as this news reached the bishop
Monsieur Habert was sent for and admonished to cease his visits to the
Rogrons; but his sister continued to go there. Thus the salon Rogron
became a fixed fact and a constituted power.
Before the year was out political intrigues were not less lively than
the matrimonial schemes of the Rogron salon. While the selfish
interests hidden in these hearts were struggling in deadly combat the
events which resulted from them had a fatal celebrity. Everybody knows
that the Villele ministry was overthrown by the elections of 1826.
Vinet, the Liberal candidate at Provins, who had borrowed money of his
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