| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: testimony. The grace and beauty of this little work supply the only, and
perhaps a sufficient, proof of its genuineness. The plan is simple; the
dramatic interest consists entirely in the contrast between the irony of
Socrates and the transparent vanity and childlike enthusiasm of the
rhapsode Ion. The theme of the Dialogue may possibly have been suggested
by the passage of Xenophon's Memorabilia in which the rhapsodists are
described by Euthydemus as 'very precise about the exact words of Homer,
but very idiotic themselves.' (Compare Aristotle, Met.)
Ion the rhapsode has just come to Athens; he has been exhibiting in
Epidaurus at the festival of Asclepius, and is intending to exhibit at the
festival of the Panathenaea. Socrates admires and envies the rhapsode's
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: THEAETETUS: I do.
SOCRATES: The only possibility of erroneous opinion is, when knowing you
and Theodorus, and having on the waxen block the impression of both of you
given as by a seal, but seeing you imperfectly and at a distance, I try to
assign the right impression of memory to the right visual impression, and
to fit this into its own print: if I succeed, recognition will take place;
but if I fail and transpose them, putting the foot into the wrong shoe--
that is to say, putting the vision of either of you on to the wrong
impression, or if my mind, like the sight in a mirror, which is transferred
from right to left, err by reason of some similar affection, then
'heterodoxy' and false opinion ensues.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: on the untenanted platform of Stallbridge-Minster.
The town was ancient and compact: a domino of tiled houses
and walled gardens, dwarfed by the disproportionate bigness of
the church. From the midst of the thoroughfare which divided
it in half, fields and trees were visible at either end; and
through the sally-port of every street, there flowed in from the
country a silent invasion of green grass. Bees and birds
appeared to make the majority of the inhabitants; every garden
had its row of hives, the eaves of every house were plastered
with the nests of swallows, and the pinnacles of the church
were flickered about all day long by a multitude of wings. The
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