| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: philosophy. But on the other hand almost every one who is capable of
understanding the subject acknowledges that his writings have not come down
to us in an authentic form like most of the dialogues of Plato. How much
of them is to be ascribed to Aristotle's own hand, how much is due to his
successors in the Peripatetic School, is a question which has never been
determined, and probably never can be, because the solution of it depends
upon internal evidence only. To 'the height of this great argument' I do
not propose to ascend. But one little fact, not irrelevant to the present
discussion, will show how hopeless is the attempt to explain Plato out of
the writings of Aristotle. In the chapter of the Metaphysics quoted by Dr.
Jackson, about two octavo pages in length, there occur no less than seven
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: about it. When it persists beyond the period at which it ceases to be
necessary to the child's welfare, it is apt to be morbid; and we are
probably wrong to inculcate its deliberate cultivation. The natural
course is for the parents and children to cast off the specific
parental and filial relation when they are no longer necessary to one
another. The child does this readily enough to form fresh ties,
closer and more fascinating. Parents are not always excluded from
such compensations: it happens sometimes that when the children go
out at the door the lover comes in at the window. Indeed it happens
now oftener than it used to, because people remain much longer in the
sexual arena. The cultivated Jewess no longer cuts off her hair at
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: But Gaston was too much elated with the enjoyment of each new day to
comprehend the Padre's soul. The shafts of another's pain might hardly
pierce the bright armor of his gaiety. He mistook the priest's entreaty,
for anxiety about his own happy spirit.
"Stay here under your care?" he asked. "It would do me no good, Padre.
Temptation sticks closer to me than a brother!" and he gave that laugh of
his which had disarmed severer judges than his host. "By next week I
should have introduced some sin or other into your beautiful Garden of
Ignorance here. It will be much safer for your flock if I go and join the
other serpents at San Francisco."
Soon after breakfast the Padre had his two mules saddled, and he and his
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