| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: therefore, is that a state founded upon such institutions will not be
the best state;[17] but, given a democracy, these are the right means
to procure its preservation. The People, it must be borne in mind,
does not demand that the city should be well governed and itself a
slave. It desires to be free and to be master.[18] As to bad
legislation it does not concern itself about that.[19] In fact, what
you believe to be bad legislation is the very source of the People's
strength and freedom. But if you seek for good legislation, in the
first place you will see the cleverest members of the community laying
down the laws for the rest. And in the next place, the better class
will curb and chastise the lower orders; the better class will
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: revealed the touch of poetry in her beauty that Selden always
felt in her presence, yet lost the sense of when he was not with
her. Its expression was now so vivid that for the first time he
seemed to see before him the real Lily Bart, divested of the
trivialities of her little world, and catching for a moment a
note of that eternal harmony of which her beauty was a part.
"Deuced bold thing to show herself in that get-up; but, gad,
there isn't a break in the lines anywhere, and I suppose she
wanted us to know it!"
These words, uttered by that experienced connoisseur, Mr. Ned Van
Alstyne, whose scented white moustache had brushed Selden's
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: concerning the economy of this unseen world we have not been led
to entertain any hypothesis that has not its possible
justification in our experiences of visible phenomena.
We are now called upon, following in the wake of our esteemed
authors, to venture on a different sort of exploration, in which
we must cut loose altogether from our moorings in the world of
which we have definite experience. We are invited to entertain
suggestions concerning the peculiar economy of the invisible
portion of the universe which we have no means of subjecting to
any sort of test of probability, either experimental or
deductive. These suggestions are, therefore, not to be regarded
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
