| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: who is a corrupter of the laws is more than likely to be a corrupter of the
young and foolish portion of mankind. Will you then flee from well-ordered
cities and virtuous men? and is existence worth having on these terms? Or
will you go to them without shame, and talk to them, Socrates? And what
will you say to them? What you say here about virtue and justice and
institutions and laws being the best things among men? Would that be
decent of you? Surely not. But if you go away from well-governed states
to Crito's friends in Thessaly, where there is great disorder and licence,
they will be charmed to hear the tale of your escape from prison, set off
with ludicrous particulars of the manner in which you were wrapped in a
goatskin or some other disguise, and metamorphosed as the manner is of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: What should I say?--One of my husband's men
Bid thou be ready, by and by, to bear
A letter to my lord, my love, my dear;
Bid him with speed prepare to carry it;
The cause craves haste, and it will soon be writ.'
Her maid is gone, and she prepares to write,
First hovering o'er the paper with her quill:
Conceit and grief an eager combat fight;
What wit sets down is blotted straight with will;
This is too curious-good, this blunt and ill:
Much like a press of people at a door,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: complete spontaneity of musical expression which can only be
attained by winning entire freedom from all preoccupation with
the difficulties of technical processes. But when that time came,
he was not only a consummate musician, like Mozart, but a
dramatic poet and a critical and philosophical essayist,
exercising a considerable influence on his century. The sign of
this consummation was his ability at last to play with his art,
and thus to add to his already famous achievements in sentimental
drama that lighthearted art of comedy of which the greatest
masters, like Moliere and Mozart, are so much rarer than the
tragedians and sentimentalists. It was then that he composed the
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