| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: Sophists (compare Protag.), but of the same character with them, and
equally impatient of the short cut-and-thrust method of Socrates, whom he
endeavours to draw into a long oration. At last, he gets tired of being
defeated at every point by Socrates, and is with difficulty induced to
proceed (compare Thrasymachus, Protagoras, Callicles, and others, to whom
the same reluctance is ascribed).
Hippias like Protagoras has common sense on his side, when he argues,
citing passages of the Iliad in support of his view, that Homer intended
Achilles to be the bravest, Odysseus the wisest of the Greeks. But he is
easily overthrown by the superior dialectics of Socrates, who pretends to
show that Achilles is not true to his word, and that no similar
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard: women, the shadows of an hour with night behind them and before.
Because I am humble and patient, do you therefore suppose that I
am not great? Man from the little country across the sea, I lived
when the world was young, and gathered up the ancient wisdom of a
greater race than yours, and when the world is old I think that I
still shall live, though not in this shape or here, with all that
wisdom's essence burning in my breast, and with all beauty in my
eyes. Bickley does not believe although he worships. You only
half believe and do not worship, because memory holds you back,
and I myself do not understand. I only know though knowing so
much, still I seek roads to learning, even the humble road called
When the World Shook |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Heritage of the Desert by Zane Grey: penetrated the fastnesses with a hunting instinct that left scarcely a
rabbit-burrow unrevealed. The days sped by; the circle of the sun arched
higher; the patches of snow in high places disappeared; and the search
proceeded westward. They camped where the night overtook them, sometimes
near water and grass, sometimes in bare dry places. To the westward the
plateau widened. Rugged ridges rose here and there, and seared crags
split the sky like sharp sawteeth. And after many miles of wild
up-ranging they reached a divide which marked the line of Eschtah's
domain.
Naab's dogged persistence and the Navajos' faithfulness carried them into
the country of the Moki Indians, a tribe classed as slaves by the proud
The Heritage of the Desert |
