11. THE LAWYER
We sat in a waiting room at the Institute of Law, while a friend registered for an examination. My companion, who had already qualified as an attorney, started browsing through the latest edition of a legal magazine.
When our friend returned and we stood up to leave, my companion casually rolled up the magazine and took it with him. With a sense of guilt, I said nothing until we had left the building, whereupon I inquired, half-jokingly, "How could you pinch that magazine, having spent so many years studying law?" He replied, "Some excellent jobs were advertised in the magazine."
12. THEODORIC
Unless... philosophers become kings... there is no rest from ills for the cities... nor will the regime we have now described in speech ever... see the light of the sun
Theodoric, the people's king, Rome's wise peace-bringer, wondered what pernicious spirit had moved his trusted, philosophical councillor to look east and plot against him.
He imprisoned Boethius in a cave away from the light of the sun, where he wrote. Reluctantly, moved by the spirit of the people, the King of Rome eventually handed Boethius over to them. But he prudently preserved Boethius' golden volume.
They tied ropes around Boethius' head and squeezed tight until his heaven-seeking eyes left their cave-like sockets and fell to the ground. Then they bludgeoned him to death. Later they came to love his book.
13. PLATO’S SECRET
Plato pretended to open a neutral school of pure science, the study of universals, in the grove of Akademeia, in view of Athens, withdrawn from politics.
For him a universal was both the whole collection of things of one kind and the best example of those things in the set. He must therefore have understood a universal to be the founder Father of a tribe of things, and the particulars, the children.
The universals told him how to rule wisely. The universal philosopher thus had particular designs, believing that he alone, the true lover of wisdom, could found Athena’s tribe.
14. THE ENIGMA OF DUKE ALANZA
Marxist scholars cannot reduce Duke Alanza's enigmatic actions to economic forces, for never was there a more extravagant attempt to impose mind on matter.
Documentary research reveals that Duke Alanza, a fervent Platonist, modelled himself on the Demiurge of Plato's Timaeus and planned to create the perfect society of Atlantis described in Plato's Republic and Critias.
In 1502, having impoverished the prosperous Dukedom of Malaga, Duke Alanza lost his life in a civil war when his free peasants finally revolted against his attempts to enslave them and force them to move, rock by rock, a mountain into the Atlantic Ocean.
15. PEBBLE
The sea’s beauty was too big for her to take home. Therefore she pocketed an ovoid, sea-worn pebble, with variegated colours that glittered brightly. Its orange was the sun and the sands; its slate blue, the sky and the sea; its crystal, the sea foam.
When she took the pebble out of her pocket back home, it was dry, scarred and dull. So she cried until, to her surprise, her tears made the pebble wet and shiny again.
Later, whenever care-worn and sad, she would shed tears on her pebble and reproduce a consoling image of the sea's eternal beauty.
We sat in a waiting room at the Institute of Law, while a friend registered for an examination. My companion, who had already qualified as an attorney, started browsing through the latest edition of a legal magazine.
When our friend returned and we stood up to leave, my companion casually rolled up the magazine and took it with him. With a sense of guilt, I said nothing until we had left the building, whereupon I inquired, half-jokingly, "How could you pinch that magazine, having spent so many years studying law?" He replied, "Some excellent jobs were advertised in the magazine."
12. THEODORIC
Unless... philosophers become kings... there is no rest from ills for the cities... nor will the regime we have now described in speech ever... see the light of the sun
Theodoric, the people's king, Rome's wise peace-bringer, wondered what pernicious spirit had moved his trusted, philosophical councillor to look east and plot against him.
He imprisoned Boethius in a cave away from the light of the sun, where he wrote. Reluctantly, moved by the spirit of the people, the King of Rome eventually handed Boethius over to them. But he prudently preserved Boethius' golden volume.
They tied ropes around Boethius' head and squeezed tight until his heaven-seeking eyes left their cave-like sockets and fell to the ground. Then they bludgeoned him to death. Later they came to love his book.
13. PLATO’S SECRET
Plato pretended to open a neutral school of pure science, the study of universals, in the grove of Akademeia, in view of Athens, withdrawn from politics.
For him a universal was both the whole collection of things of one kind and the best example of those things in the set. He must therefore have understood a universal to be the founder Father of a tribe of things, and the particulars, the children.
The universals told him how to rule wisely. The universal philosopher thus had particular designs, believing that he alone, the true lover of wisdom, could found Athena’s tribe.
14. THE ENIGMA OF DUKE ALANZA
Marxist scholars cannot reduce Duke Alanza's enigmatic actions to economic forces, for never was there a more extravagant attempt to impose mind on matter.
Documentary research reveals that Duke Alanza, a fervent Platonist, modelled himself on the Demiurge of Plato's Timaeus and planned to create the perfect society of Atlantis described in Plato's Republic and Critias.
In 1502, having impoverished the prosperous Dukedom of Malaga, Duke Alanza lost his life in a civil war when his free peasants finally revolted against his attempts to enslave them and force them to move, rock by rock, a mountain into the Atlantic Ocean.
15. PEBBLE
The sea’s beauty was too big for her to take home. Therefore she pocketed an ovoid, sea-worn pebble, with variegated colours that glittered brightly. Its orange was the sun and the sands; its slate blue, the sky and the sea; its crystal, the sea foam.
When she took the pebble out of her pocket back home, it was dry, scarred and dull. So she cried until, to her surprise, her tears made the pebble wet and shiny again.
Later, whenever care-worn and sad, she would shed tears on her pebble and reproduce a consoling image of the sea's eternal beauty.