| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: SOCRATES: But if neither the Sophists nor the gentlemen are teachers,
clearly there can be no other teachers?
MENO: No.
SOCRATES: And if there are no teachers, neither are there disciples?
MENO: Agreed.
SOCRATES: And we have admitted that a thing cannot be taught of which
there are neither teachers nor disciples?
MENO: We have.
SOCRATES: And there are no teachers of virtue to be found anywhere?
MENO: There are not.
SOCRATES: And if there are no teachers, neither are there scholars?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: forethought for the future, an elevated degree of culture--all of
them conditions that crowds, left to themselves, have invariably
shown themselves incapable of realising. In consequence of the
purely destructive nature of their power crowds act like those
microbes which hasten the dissolution of enfeebled or dead
bodies. When the structure of a civilisation is rotten, it is
always the masses that bring about its downfall. It is at such a
juncture that their chief mission is plainly visible, and that
for a while the philosophy of number seems the only philosophy of
history.
Is the same fate in store for our civilisation? There is ground
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: other.
And further, even a tyrant cannot but be something of a patriot--a
lover of that state, without which he can neither hope for safety nor
prosperity. On the other hand, his tyrrany, the exigencies of despotic
rule, compel him to incriminate his fatherland.[5] To train his
citizens to soldiery, to render them brave warriors, and well armed,
confers no pleasure on him; rather he will take delight to make his
foreigners more formidable than those to whom the state belongs, and
these foreigners he will depend on as his body-guard.
[5] Or, "depreciate the land which gave him birth." Holden cf.
"Cyrop." VII. ii. 22. See Sturz, s.v.
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