| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: being agreeable to the majority of his hearers, may be fairly termed
loquacity: such is my opinion.
THEAETETUS: That is the common name for it.
STRANGER: But now who the other is, who makes money out of private
disputation, it is your turn to say.
THEAETETUS: There is only one true answer: he is the wonderful Sophist,
of whom we are in pursuit, and who reappears again for the fourth time.
STRANGER: Yes, and with a fresh pedigree, for he is the money-making
species of the Eristic, disputatious, controversial, pugnacious, combative,
acquisitive family, as the argument has already proven.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: the world."
"Oh, surely not," said the traveller.
"Well, perhaps not the largest," said the citizen, "but much the
best."
"You are certainly wrong there," said the traveller. "I can tell
you . . ."
They buried the stranger at the dusk.
XIII. - THE DISTINGUISHED STRANGER.
ONCE upon a time there came to this earth a visitor from a
neighbouring planet. And he was met at the place of his descent by
a great philosopher, who was to show him everything.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: to remove all snares far from his path, to deliver him from his
enemies, to grant him a long and peaceful life. And with this daily
renewed gratitude, as it may be called, there blended a feeling of
curiosity which grew more lively day by day. They talked over the
circumstances of his first sudden appearance, their conjectures were
endless; the stranger had conferred one more benefit upon them by
diverting their minds. Again, and again, they said, when he next came
to see them as he promised, to celebrate the sad anniversary of the
death of Louis XVI., he could not escape their friendship.
The night so impatiently awaited came at last. At midnight the old
wooden staircase echoed with the stranger's heavy footsteps. They had
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