| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: would stay with me, I suppose. I should think it very unkind if
you didn't.
JACK. Well, will you go if I change my clothes?
ALGERNON. Yes, if you are not too long. I never saw anybody take
so long to dress, and with such little result.
JACK. Well, at any rate, that is better than being always over-
dressed as you are.
ALGERNON. If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up
for it by being always immensely over-educated.
JACK. Your vanity is ridiculous, your conduct an outrage, and your
presence in my garden utterly absurd. However, you have got to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: night--. . . . "
"Yes?" he said to her pause, and his face came very near to
hers.
I want you to kiss me. "
"Yes," he said awkwardly, glancing over his shoulder, acutely
aware of the promenaders passing close to them.
"It's a promise?"
"Yes."
Very timidly and guiltily his hand sought hers beside it and
gripped it and pressed it. "My dear!" he whispered, tritest
and most unavoidable of expressions. It was not very like Man
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: to us in the Philebus and the Republic will not be called by the name of
(Greek). Hence we see with surprise that Plato, who in his other writings
identifies good and knowledge, here opposes them, and asks, almost in the
spirit of Aristotle, how can there be a knowledge of knowledge, and even if
attainable, how can such a knowledge be of any use?
The difficulty of the Charmides arises chiefly from the two senses of the
word (Greek), or temperance. From the ethical notion of temperance, which
is variously defined to be quietness, modesty, doing our own business, the
doing of good actions, the dialogue passes onto the intellectual conception
of (Greek), which is declared also to be the science of self-knowledge, or
of the knowledge of what we know and do not know, or of the knowledge of
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