| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: however, was not the avowed purpose of that tour. It was rather,
I suspect, planned in order to distract and occupy my thoughts in
other directions. Nothing had been said for months of my going
to sea. But my attachment to my young tutor and his influence
over me were so well known that he must have received a
confidential mission to talk me out of my romantic folly. It was
an excellently appropriate arrangement, as neither he nor I had
ever had a single glimpse of the sea in our lives. That was to
come by and by for both of us in Venice, from the outer shore of
Lido. Meantime he had taken his mission to heart so well that I
began to feel crushed before we reached Zurich. He argued in
A Personal Record |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: obscure in itself, had for me a certain ideal significance. It
was an answer to certain outspoken scepticism, and even to some
not very kind aspersions. I had vindicated myself from what had
been cried upon as a stupid obstinacy or a fantastic caprice. I
don't mean to say that a whole country had been convulsed by my
desire to go to sea. But for a boy between fifteen and sixteen,
sensitive enough, in all conscience, the commotion of his little
world had seemed a very considerable thing indeed. So
considerable that, absurdly enough, the echoes of it linger to
this day. I catch myself in hours of solitude and retrospect
meeting arguments and charges made thirty-five years ago by
Some Reminiscences |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: may be the extinction of her. For admitting that she may have been born
elsewhere, and framed out of other elements, and was in existence before
entering the human body, why after having entered in and gone out again may
she not herself be destroyed and come to an end?
Very true, Simmias, said Cebes; about half of what was required has been
proven; to wit, that our souls existed before we were born:--that the soul
will exist after death as well as before birth is the other half of which
the proof is still wanting, and has to be supplied; when that is given the
demonstration will be complete.
But that proof, Simmias and Cebes, has been already given, said Socrates,
if you put the two arguments together--I mean this and the former one, in
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