| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: absolute sense. Thus we have discovered that not-being is the principle of
the other which runs through all things, being not excepted. And 'being'
is one thing, and 'not-being' includes and is all other things. And not-
being is not the opposite of being, but only the other. Knowledge has many
branches, and the other or difference has as many, each of which is
described by prefixing the word 'not' to some kind of knowledge. The not-
beautiful is as real as the beautiful, the not-just as the just. And the
essence of the not-beautiful is to be separated from and opposed to a
certain kind of existence which is termed beautiful. And this opposition
and negation is the not-being of which we are in search, and is one kind of
being. Thus, in spite of Parmenides, we have not only discovered the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: quickly turning from the father to the daughter, he sat waiting
for the effect of his appeal. "It is not your want of means,"
said Mr. Wentworth, after a period of severe reticence.
"Now it 's delightful of you to say that! Only don't say
it 's my want of character. Because I have a character--
I assure you I have; a small one, a little slip of a thing,
but still something tangible."
"Ought you not to tell Felix that it is Mr. Brand, father?"
Charlotte asked, with infinite mildness.
"It is not only Mr. Brand," Mr. Wentworth solemnly declared.
And he looked at his knee for a long time. "It is difficult
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: astonished and attracted by the riddles which the conflicting
nature at the basis of the German soul propounds to them (riddles
which Hegel systematised and Richard Wagner has in the end set to
music). "Good-natured and spiteful"--such a juxtaposition,
preposterous in the case of every other people, is unfortunately
only too often justified in Germany one has only to live for a
while among Swabians to know this! The clumsiness of the German
scholar and his social distastefulness agree alarmingly well with
his physical rope-dancing and nimble boldness, of which all the
Gods have learnt to be afraid. If any one wishes to see the
"German soul" demonstrated ad oculos, let him only look at German
Beyond Good and Evil |
