| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: "Yes, madame; but you must bring it back to us. The doctor may need
it."
"It would be too painful for madame to see me operate," said the
doctor, understanding the suspicions of the prosecutor. "Messieurs,"
he added, "I hope you will allow her to remain in the next room."
The magistrates approved the request of the merciful physician, and
Felicie was permitted to attend her mistress. The judge and the
prosecutor talked together in a low voice. Officers of the law are
very unfortunate in being forced to suspect all, and to imagine evil
everywhere. By dint of supposing wicked intentions, and of
comprehending them, in order to reach the truth hidden under so many
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: sailing beyond the Columns, and the popular belief of the shallowness of
the ocean in that part: (9) the confession that the depth of the ditch in
the Island of Atlantis was not to be believed, and 'yet he could only
repeat what he had heard', compared with the statement made in an earlier
passage that Poseidon, being a God, found no difficulty in contriving the
water-supply of the centre island: (10) the mention of the old rivalry of
Poseidon and Athene, and the creation of the first inhabitants out of the
soil. Plato here, as elsewhere, ingeniously gives the impression that he
is telling the truth which mythology had corrupted.
The world, like a child, has readily, and for the most part unhesitatingly,
accepted the tale of the Island of Atlantis. In modern times we hardly
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, 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
|
