| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: clearly right also in maintaining that virtue can be taught (which Socrates
himself, at the end of the Dialogue, is disposed to concede); and also (3)
in his explanation of the phenomenon that good fathers have bad sons; (4)
he is right also in observing that the virtues are not like the arts, gifts
or attainments of special individuals, but the common property of all:
this, which in all ages has been the strength and weakness of ethics and
politics, is deeply seated in human nature; (5) there is a sort of half-
truth in the notion that all civilized men are teachers of virtue; and more
than a half-truth (6) in ascribing to man, who in his outward conditions is
more helpless than the other animals, the power of self-improvement; (7)
the religious allegory should be noticed, in which the arts are said to be
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: a pair of wild, cream-coloured Spanish ponies, Octavia
abandoned all thought for the exhilaration of the present.
They swept out of the little town and down the level road
toward the south. Soon the road dwindled and dis-
appeared, and they struck across a world carpeted with
an endless reach of curly mesquite grass. The wheels
made no sound. The tireless ponies bounded ahead at
an unbroken gallop. The temperate wind, made fragrant
by thousands of acres of blue and yellow wild flowers,
roared gloriously in their ears. The motion was a�rial,
ecstatic, with a thrilling sense of perpetuity in its effect.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: suspicion so degrading and so unnatural.
"Yes!" he continued, "your hesitation confesses that you
entertained such an opinion, and I have now the painful task of
acknowledging that your suspicions have done me no injustice.
But listen to my motives. In an evil hour I countenanced the
addresses of Sir Frederick Langley, conceiving it impossible that
you could have any permanent objections to a match where the
advantages were, in most respects, on your side. In a worse, I
entered with him into measures calculated to restore our banished
monarch, and the independence of my country. He has taken
advantage of my unguarded confidence, and now has my life at his
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