| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: another and more elaborate explanation of the whole passage. The
explanation is as follows:--
The Lacedaemonians are great philosophers (although this is a fact which is
not generally known); and the soul of their philosophy is brevity, which
was also the style of primitive antiquity and of the seven sages. Now
Pittacus had a saying, 'Hard is it to be good:' and Simonides, who was
jealous of the fame of this saying, wrote a poem which was designed to
controvert it. No, says he, Pittacus; not 'hard to be good,' but 'hard to
become good.' Socrates proceeds to argue in a highly impressive manner
that the whole composition is intended as an attack upon Pittacus. This,
though manifestly absurd, is accepted by the company, and meets with the
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: of the visitor's surroundings, and the atmosphere of affliction,
disease, and physical disgrace in which he breathes. I do not
think I am a man more than usually timid; but I never recall the
days and nights I spent upon that island promontory (eight days and
seven nights), without heartfelt thankfulness that I am somewhere
else. I find in my diary that I speak of my stay as a "grinding
experience": I have once jotted in the margin, "HARROWING is the
word"; and when the MOKOLII bore me at last towards the outer
world, I kept repeating to myself, with a new conception of their
pregnancy, those simple words of the song -
" 'Tis the most distressful country that ever yet was seen."
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: or any sense of the greatness of the discovery, at the modern doctrine of
gravitation. He does not observe that water has an equal tendency towards
both water and earth. So easily did the most obvious facts which were
inconsistent with his theories escape him.
The general physical doctrines of the Timaeus may be summed up as follows:
(1) Plato supposes the greater masses of the elements to have been already
settled in their places at the creation: (2) they are four in number, and
are formed of rectangular triangles variously combined into regular solid
figures: (3) three of them, fire, air, and water, admit of transformation
into one another; the fourth, earth, cannot be similarly transformed: (4)
different sizes of the same triangles form the lesser species of each
|
