| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: health is so bad, that I have only two quiet hours out of the twenty-
four.
"At this moment I have but one ambition, and a very small one. Some
day," he continued, "you will be the wife of the Keeper of the Seals,
or of the Home Secretary, it may be; but I, poor and sickly as I am,
desire nothing but a post in which I can live in peace for the rest of
my life, a place without any opening in which to vegetate. I should
like to be a justice of the peace in Paris. It would be a mere trifle
for you and M. le President to gain the appointment for me; for the
present Keeper of the Seals must be anxious to keep on good terms with
you . . .
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: virtue, or anything at all in that fashion; we should only have to ask over
again the old question, What is virtue? Am I not right?
MENO: I believe that you are.
SOCRATES: Then begin again, and answer me, What, according to you and your
friend Gorgias, is the definition of virtue?
MENO: O Socrates, I used to be told, before I knew you, that you were
always doubting yourself and making others doubt; and now you are casting
your spells over me, and I am simply getting bewitched and enchanted, and
am at my wits' end. And if I may venture to make a jest upon you, you seem
to me both in your appearance and in your power over others to be very like
the flat torpedo fish, who torpifies those who come near him and touch him,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: arise from the opposite process--when the natural proportions of the four
elements are disturbed, and the secondary substances which are formed out
of them, namely, blood, flesh, sinews, are generated in an inverse order.
Plato found heat and air within the human frame, and the blood circulating
in every part. He assumes in language almost unintelligible to us that a
network of fire and air envelopes the greater part of the body. This outer
net contains two lesser nets, one corresponding to the stomach, the other
to the lungs; and the entrance to the latter is forked or divided into two
passages which lead to the nostrils and to the mouth. In the process of
respiration the external net is said to find a way in and out of the pores
of the skin: while the interior of it and the lesser nets move alternately
|
