| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: become tyrant of Athens, and if this seemed in your eyes a small and mean
thing, should add to it the dominion of all Hellas; and seeing that even
then you would not be satisfied unless you were ruler of the whole of
Europe, should promise, not only that, but, if you so desired, should
proclaim to all mankind in one and the same day that Alcibiades, son of
Cleinias, was tyrant:--in such a case, I imagine, you would depart full of
joy, as one who had obtained the greatest of goods.
ALCIBIADES: And not only I, Socrates, but any one else who should meet
with such luck.
SOCRATES: Yet you would not accept the dominion and lordship of all the
Hellenes and all the barbarians in exchange for your life?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: other.
Certainly.
And must they not be the same and yet different from one another, and in
contact with themselves, although they are separated, and having every sort
of motion, and every sort of rest, and becoming and being destroyed, and in
neither state, and the like, all which things may be easily enumerated, if
the one is not and the many are?
Most true.
2.bb. Once more, let us go back to the beginning, and ask if the one is
not, and the others of the one are, what will follow.
Let us ask that question.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: transcribe into the album one of his most characteristic passages.
I told him how I had got rid of the strange girl who had brought it
- her ominous name was Miss Hurter and she lived at an hotel; quite
agreeing with him moreover as to the wisdom of getting rid with
equal promptitude of the book itself. This was why I carried it to
Albemarle Street no later than on the morrow. I failed to find her
at home, but she wrote to me and I went again; she wanted so much
to hear more about Neil Paraday. I returned repeatedly, I may
briefly declare, to supply her with this information. She had been
immensely taken, the more she thought of it, with that idea of mine
about the act of homage: it had ended by filling her with a
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