much
more fair realities? And if Miranda is immoral to Caliban, is that
Miranda's fault?

82. And I could easily go on to trace for you what at the moment I
speak, is signified, in our own national character, by the forms of art,
and unhappily also by the forms of what is not art, but [Greek:
atechnia], that exist among us. But the more important question is, What
_will_ be signified by them; what is there in us now of worth and
strength, which under our new and partly accidental impulse towards
formative labour, may be by that expressed, and by that fortified?

Would it not be well to know this? Nay, irrespective of all future work,
is it not the first thing we should want to know, what stuff we are made
of--how far we are +agathoi+ or +kakoi+--good, or good for
nothing? We may all know that, each of ourselves, easily enough, if we
like to put one grave question well home.

83. Supposing it were told any of you by a physician whose word you
could not but trust, that you had not more than seven days to live. And
suppose also that, by the manner of your education it had happened to
you, as it has happened to many, never to have heard of any future
state, or not to have credited what you heard; and therefore that you
had to face this fact of the approach of death in its simplicity:
fearing no punishment for any sin that you might have before committed,
or in the coming days might determine to commit; and having similarly no
hope of reward for past, or yet possible, virtue; nor even of any
consciousness whatever to be left to you, after the seventh day had
ended, either of the results of your acts to those whom you loved, or of
the feelings of any survivors towards you. Then the manner in which you
would spend the seven days is an exact measure of the morality of your
nature.

84. I know that some of you, and I believe the greater number of you,
would, in such a case, spend the granted days entirely as you ought.
Neither in numbering the errors, or deploring the pleasures of the
past; nor in grasping at vile good in the present, nor vainly lamenting
the darkness of the future; but in an instant and earnest execution of
whatever it might be possible for you to accomplish in the time, in
setting your affairs in order, and in providing for the future comfort,
and--so far as you might by any message or record of yourself,--for the
consolation, of those whom you loved, and by whom you desired to be
remembered, not f