| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: is somewhat longer than any of them, though not verified by the testimony
of Aristotle, and in many respects at variance with the Symposium in the
description of the relations of Socrates and Alcibiades. Like the Lesser
Hippias and the Menexenus, it is to be compared to the earlier writings of
Plato. The motive of the piece may, perhaps, be found in that passage of
the Symposium in which Alcibiades describes himself as self-convicted by
the words of Socrates. For the disparaging manner in which Schleiermacher
has spoken of this dialogue there seems to be no sufficient foundation. At
the same time, the lesson imparted is simple, and the irony more
transparent than in the undoubted dialogues of Plato. We know, too, that
Alcibiades was a favourite thesis, and that at least five or six dialogues
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: useful to herself and to the rest of the world. You know our
plans. But with fighting on all our fronts, and with all our
best men away, we are compelled to use ninety per cent. of
our energy and material for the immediate needs of the
army. Every day we get masses of telegrams from all fronts,
asking for this or that. For example, Trotsky telegraphs here
simply "We shall be in Orenburg in two days," leaving us to
do what is necessary. Then with the map before me, I have
to send what will be needed, no matter what useful work has
to be abandoned meanwhile, engineers, railway gangs for
putting right the railways, material for bridges, and so on.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: desirable corrective to a too bewildering dreamy sense of
unwontedness in his position; and Dunstan, as he went along through
the gathering mist, was always rapping his whip somewhere. It was
Godfrey's whip, which he had chosen to take without leave because it
had a gold handle; of course no one could see, when Dunstan held it,
that the name _Godfrey Cass_ was cut in deep letters on that gold
handle--they could only see that it was a very handsome whip.
Dunsey was not without fear that he might meet some acquaintance in
whose eyes he would cut a pitiable figure, for mist is no screen
when people get close to each other; but when he at last found
himself in the well-known Raveloe lanes without having met a soul,
Silas Marner |
