| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: and are antagonistic throughout a great part of nature.
YOUNG SOCRATES: How singular!
STRANGER: Yes, very--for all the parts of virtue are commonly said to be
friendly to one another.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.
STRANGER: Then let us carefully investigate whether this is universally
true, or whether there are not parts of virtue which are at war with their
kindred in some respect.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Tell me how we shall consider that question.
STRANGER: We must extend our enquiry to all those things which we consider
beautiful and at the same time place in two opposite classes.
Statesman |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: hurried to the city. And the leper seeing him coming, stood in the
centre of the road, and cried out, and said to him, 'Give me the
piece of red money, or I must die,' and the Star-Child had pity on
him again, and gave him the piece of red gold, saying, 'Thy need is
greater than mine.' Yet was his heart heavy, for he knew what evil
fate awaited him.
But lo! as he passed through the gate of the city, the guards bowed
down and made obeisance to him, saying, 'How beautiful is our
lord!' and a crowd of citizens followed him, and cried out, 'Surely
there is none so beautiful in the whole world!' so that the Star-
Child wept, and said to himself, 'They are mocking me, and making
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: but a fainthearted warrior, come unbidden (Iliad) to the banquet of
Agamemnon, who is feasting and offering sacrifices, not the better to the
worse, but the worse to the better.
I rather fear, Socrates, said Aristodemus, lest this may still be my case;
and that, like Menelaus in Homer, I shall be the inferior person, who
'To the feasts of the wise unbidden goes.'
But I shall say that I was bidden of you, and then you will have to make an
excuse.
'Two going together,'
he replied, in Homeric fashion, one or other of them may invent an excuse
by the way (Iliad).
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