| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: knowledge is irreconcilable with experience. In human life there is indeed
the profession of knowledge, but right opinion is our actual guide. There
is another sort of progress from the general notions of Socrates, who asked
simply, 'what is friendship?' 'what is temperance?' 'what is courage?' as
in the Lysis, Charmides, Laches, to the transcendentalism of Plato, who, in
the second stage of his philosophy, sought to find the nature of knowledge
in a prior and future state of existence.
The difficulty in framing general notions which has appeared in this and in
all the previous Dialogues recurs in the Gorgias and Theaetetus as well as
in the Republic. In the Gorgias too the statesmen reappear, but in
stronger opposition to the philosopher. They are no longer allowed to have
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: Graham could speak he had hurried on.
The great buildings rose dimly, veiled by a perplexing
twilight, albeit the rivulet of sky above was now
bright with day. He noted many strange features,
understanding none at the time; he even spelt out
many of the inscriptions in Phonetic lettering. But
what profits it to decipher a confusion of odd-looking
letters resolving itself, after painful strain of eye and
mind, into "Here is Eadhamite," or, "Labour Bureau--
Little Side?" Grotesque thought, that in all
probability some or all of these cliff-like houses were
When the Sleeper Wakes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Riverman by Stewart Edward White: cellar to attic store-room, seeing that Amanda, the "help," had
everything in order. The other half she sat in a wooden "Dutch"
rocking-chair by a window overlooking the garden. Her silk-shod
feet rested neatly side by side on a carpet-covered hassock, her
back against a gay tapestried cushion. Near her purred big Jim, a
maltese rumoured to weigh fifteen pounds. Above her twittered a
canary.
And the interior of the house itself was in keeping. The low
ceilings, the slight irregularities of structure peculiar to the
rather rule-of-thumb methods of the earlier builders, the deep
window embrasures due to the thickness of the walls, the unexpected
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