| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: is based on a natural instinct. Laches exhibits one aspect of courage;
Nicias the other. The perfect image and harmony of both is only realized
in Socrates himself.
The Dialogue offers one among many examples of the freedom with which Plato
treats facts. For the scene must be supposed to have occurred between B.C.
424, the year of the battle of Delium, and B.C. 418, the year of the battle
of Mantinea, at which Laches fell. But if Socrates was more than seventy
years of age at his trial in 399 (see Apology), he could not have been a
young man at any time after the battle of Delium.
LACHES, OR COURAGE.
by
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: "The things were gev to her: that's plain enough to be seen."
"I didn't mean as I thought so," said the husband, apologetically,
"but I said it was what the jeweller might think, and so he
wouldn't be offering much money for 'em."
"Well," said the wife, "suppose you were to advance some money on
the things yourself, and then if she liked to redeem 'em when she
got home, she could. But if we heard nothing from her after two
months, we might do as we liked with 'em."
I will not say that in this accommodating proposition the landlady
had no regard whatever to the possible reward of her good nature
in the ultimate possession of the locket and ear-rings: indeed,
Adam Bede |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: Lloyd Garrison, and fully committed to his doctrine touching the
pro-slavery character of the constitution of the United States,
and the _non-voting principle_, of which he is the known and
distinguished advocate. With Mr. Garrison, I held it to be the
first duty of the non-slaveholding states to dissolve the union
with the slaveholding states; and hence my cry, like his, was,
"No union with slaveholders." With these views, I came into
western New York; and during the first four years of my labor
here, I advocated them with pen and tongue, according to the best
of my ability.
About four years ago, upon a reconsideration of the whole
My Bondage and My Freedom |
