| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: undertakes to carry them out, so he takes a regiment, a division-
stipulates that no one is to interfere with his arrangements- leads
his division to the decisive point, and gains the victory alone.
"But death and suffering?" suggested another voice. Prince Andrew,
however, did not answer that voice and went on dreaming of his
triumphs. The dispositions for the next battle are planned by him
alone. Nominally he is only an adjutant on Kutuzov's staff, but he
does everything alone. The next battle is won by him alone. Kutuzov is
removed and he is appointed... "Well and then?" asked the other voice.
"If before that you are not ten times wounded, killed, or betrayed,
well... what then?..." "Well then," Prince Andrew answered himself, "I
War and Peace |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: hell!' and I just pumps a bit of lead into his hoof."
Smiling, Pancracio turned his beardless head around as
if soliciting applause.
Then the stranger spoke:
"Who's your commander?"
Proudly, Anastasio raised his head, went up to him
and looked him in the face. The stranger lowered his tone
considerably.
"Well, I'm a revolutionist, too, you know. The Govern-
ment drafted me and I served as a private, but I man-
aged to desert during the battle the day before yesterday,
The Underdogs |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: never inquires--they seem to him to have a necessary existence; nor does he
attempt to analyse the various senses in which the word 'cause' or
'substance' may be employed.
The philosophy of Berkeley could never have had any meaning, even to
himself, if he had first analyzed from every point of view the conception
of 'matter.' This poor forgotten word (which was 'a very good word' to
describe the simplest generalization of external objects) is now superseded
in the vocabulary of physical philosophers by 'force,' which seems to be
accepted without any rigid examination of its meaning, as if the general
idea of 'force' in our minds furnished an explanation of the infinite
variety of forces which exist in the universe. A similar ambiguity occurs
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