| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Faraday as a Discoverer by John Tyndall: it, the body, though magnetic, is repelled; and when an elongated
piece of it is surrounded by the solution, it sets, like a
diamagnetic body, equatorially between the excited poles. The same
body when suspended in a solution of weaker magnetic power than
itself, is attracted as a whole, while an elongated portion of it
sets axially.
And now theoretic questions rush in upon him. Is this new force a
true repulsion, or is it merely a differential attraction? Might not
the apparent repulsion of diamagnetic bodies be really due to the
greater attraction of the medium by which they are surrounded?
He tries the rarefaction of air, but finds the effect insensible.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: are the givers of all good, how can we give them any good in return? 'Nay,
but we give them honour.' Then we give them not what is beneficial, but
what is pleasing or dear to them; and this is the point which has been
already disproved.
Socrates, although weary of the subterfuges and evasions of Euthyphro,
remains unshaken in his conviction that he must know the nature of piety,
or he would never have prosecuted his old father. He is still hoping that
he will condescend to instruct him. But Euthyphro is in a hurry and cannot
stay. And Socrates' last hope of knowing the nature of piety before he is
prosecuted for impiety has disappeared. As in the Euthydemus the irony is
carried on to the end.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: about, he led the way with his firm military tread, in those wonderful
boots, carrying brown paper parcels, down the path, his children
following him. They looked, she thought, as if fate had devoted them
to some stern enterprise, and they went to it, still young enough to be
drawn acquiescent in their father's wake, obediently, but with a pallor
in their eyes which made her feel that they suffered something beyond
their years in silence. So they passed the edge of the lawn, and it
seemed to Lily that she watched a procession go, drawn on by some
stress of common feeling which made it, faltering and flagging as it
was, a little company bound together and strangely impressive to her.
Politely, but very distantly, Mr Ramsay raised his hand and saluted her
To the Lighthouse |
