For a discussion of the use of items such as this, see Writing at the Threshold, pages 33-35.

Also please note:

All three sources represented in this selection of wisdom-sayings deal with certain tenacious human issues, such as:

• How can one attain true knowledge?

• Is humankind sinful by nature?

• To what extent does life's quality benefit from self-interest or ambition and to what extent does it benefit from fear?

A possible synthesizing assignment for students is to analyze the stance of just one source--Confucius or the Bible or Ben Franklin--on just one of these issues. That turns out to be a complex matter in itself, given the ostensible contradictions within each source.

Of course, an even harder synthesizing task is to compare and contrast the stances of all three sources on an issue.

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