| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: good, for the one which had would certainly have been sufficient and
perfect and eligible for every living creature or thing that was able to
live such a life; and if any of us had chosen any other, he would have
chosen contrary to the nature of the truly eligible, and not of his own
free will, but either through ignorance or from some unhappy necessity.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly that seems to be true.
SOCRATES: And now have I not sufficiently shown that Philebus' goddess is
not to be regarded as identical with the good?
PHILEBUS: Neither is your 'mind' the good, Socrates, for that will be open
to the same objections.
SOCRATES: Perhaps, Philebus, you may be right in saying so of my 'mind';
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: part as enemies instead of as friends. But now, when we are contending
about a thing of which the usefulness continues during the whole of life,
and it makes an enormous difference whether we are to regard it as
beneficial or not,--a thing, too, which is esteemed of the highest
importance by the Hellenes:--(for parents, as soon as their children are,
as they think, come to years of discretion, urge them to consider how
wealth may be acquired, since by riches the value of a man is judged):--
When, I say, we are thus in earnest, and you, who agree in other respects,
fall to disputing about a matter of such moment, that is, about wealth, and
not merely whether it is black or white, light or heavy, but whether it is
a good or an evil, whereby, although you are now the dearest of friends and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: aloud; but she DID refrain.
"This," continued the Recluse, "is the life of nature, solitary,
self-sufficing, and independent. The wolf calls not the wolf to
aid him in forming his den; and the vulture invites not another
to assist her in striking down her prey."
"And when they are unable to procure themselves support," said
Isabella, judiciously thinking that he would be most accessible
to argument couched in his own metaphorical style, "what then is
to befall them?"
"Let them starve, die, and be forgotten; it is the common lot of
humanity."
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