| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: bitterness, as in the Laws, though traces of a similar temper may also be
observed in the description of the 'great brute' in the Republic, and in
the contrast of the lawyer and philosopher in the Theaetetus. The
following are characteristic passages: 'The ancient philosophers, of whom
we may say, without offence, that they went on their way rather regardless
of whether we understood them or not;' the picture of the materialists, or
earth-born giants, 'who grasped oaks and rocks in their hands,' and who
must be improved before they can be reasoned with; and the equally
humourous delineation of the friends of ideas, who defend themselves from a
fastness in the invisible world; or the comparison of the Sophist to a
painter or maker (compare Republic), and the hunt after him in the rich
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles: Beyond our borders, and the eyes that now
See clear shall henceforward endless night.
Ah whither shall thy bitter cry not reach,
What crag in all Cithaeron but shall then
Reverberate thy wail, when thou hast found
With what a hymeneal thou wast borne
Home, but to no fair haven, on the gale!
Aye, and a flood of ills thou guessest not
Shall set thyself and children in one line.
Flout then both Creon and my words, for none
Of mortals shall be striken worse than thou.
Oedipus Trilogy |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail,
by the judgment of this great tribunal, the American people.
By the frame of the government under which we live, this same people
have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief;
and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of that little
to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain
their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of
wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government
in the short space of four years.
My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and WELL upon this
whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.
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