| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: chief question which I asked, Euthyphro, if you had chosen. But I see
plainly that you are not disposed to instruct me--clearly not: else why,
when we reached the point, did you turn aside? Had you only answered me I
should have truly learned of you by this time the nature of piety. Now, as
the asker of a question is necessarily dependent on the answerer, whither
he leads I must follow; and can only ask again, what is the pious, and what
is piety? Do you mean that they are a sort of science of praying and
sacrificing?
EUTHYPHRO: Yes, I do.
SOCRATES: And sacrificing is giving to the gods, and prayer is asking of
the gods?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: Yes, she is dying, I must forgive her,' I added, trying to be
generous.
"I approached the bedside. With difficulty she raised her eyes,
one of which was swollen, and uttered these words haltingly:
"'You have accomplished what you desired. You have killed me.'
"And in her face, through the physical sufferings, in spite of
the approach of death, was expressed the same old hatred, so
familiar to me.
"'The children . . . I will not give them to you . . . all the
same. . . . She (her sister) shall take them.' . . .
"But of that which I considered essential, of her fault, of her
The Kreutzer Sonata |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: ers suffered violent death or else slavery, passing
through years of precarious existence with people
to whom their strangeness was an object of suspi-
cion, dislike or fear. We read about these things,
and they are very pitiful. It is indeed hard upon
a man to find himself a lost stranger, helpless,
incomprehensible, and of a mysterious origin, in
some obscure corner of the earth. Yet amongst all
the adventurers shipwrecked in all the wild parts of
the world there is not one, it seems to me, that ever
had to suffer a fate so simply tragic as the man I
Amy Foster |
