| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Dominicus related the facts, testified that the old gentleman was
accustomed to return home through the orchard about nightfall,
with the money and valuable papers of the store in his pocket.
The clerk manifested but little grief at Mr. Higginbotham's
catastrophe, hinting, what the pedlar had discovered in his own
dealings with him, that he was a crusty old fellow, as close as a
vice. His property would descend to a pretty niece who was now
keeping school in Kimballton.
What with telling the news for the public good, and driving
bargains for his own, Dominicus was so much delayed on the road
that he chose to put up at a tavern, about five miles short of
Twice Told Tales |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with
right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally
accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked.
I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not
vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am
willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation,
therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting
for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only
expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail.
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance,
nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: Alcibiades. Of these, the Lesser Hippias and the Funeral Oration are cited
by Aristotle; the first in the Metaphysics, the latter in the Rhetoric.
Neither of them are expressly attributed to Plato, but in his citation of
both of them he seems to be referring to passages in the extant dialogues.
From the mention of 'Hippias' in the singular by Aristotle, we may perhaps
infer that he was unacquainted with a second dialogue bearing the same
name. Moreover, the mere existence of a Greater and Lesser Hippias, and of
a First and Second Alcibiades, does to a certain extent throw a doubt upon
both of them. Though a very clever and ingenious work, the Lesser Hippias
does not appear to contain anything beyond the power of an imitator, who
was also a careful student of the earlier Platonic writings, to invent.
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