| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin: of gushing water--not monotonous or low, but changeful and loud,
rising occasionally into drifting passages of wild melody, then
breaking off into short, melancholy tones or sudden shrieks
resembling those of human voices in distress or pain. The ice was
broken into thousands of confused shapes, but none, Hans thought,
like the ordinary forms of splintered ice. There seemed a curious
EXPRESSION about all their outlines--a perpetual resemblance to
living features, distorted and scornful. Myriads of deceitful
shadows and lurid lights played and floated about and through the
pale blue pinnacles, dazzling and confusing the sight of the
traveler, while his ears grew dull and his head giddy with the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: which the king has in view is not so much to govern the provinces
according to uniform and dearly defined laws, to maintain the majesty of
religion, and to give his people universal peace, as unconditionally to
subjugate them, to rob them of their ancient rights, to appropriate their
possessions, to curtail the fair privileges of the nobles, for whose sake
alone they are ready to serve him with life and limb. Religion, it is said, is
merely a splendid device, behind which every dangerous design may be
contrived with the greater ease; the prostrate crowds adore the sacred
symbols pictured there, while behind lurks the fowler ready to ensnare
them.
Alva. This must I hear from you?
 Egmont |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: be one and the same in all at the same time.
I like your way, Socrates, of making one in many places at once. You mean
to say, that if I were to spread out a sail and cover a number of men,
there would be one whole including many--is not that your meaning?
I think so.
And would you say that the whole sail includes each man, or a part of it
only, and different parts different men?
The latter.
Then, Socrates, the ideas themselves will be divisible, and things which
participate in them will have a part of them only and not the whole idea
existing in each of them?
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