| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Koran: unjust who turn from the way of God and crave to make it crooked,
while in the hereafter they do disbelieve!'
And betwixt the two there is a veil, and on al Aaraf are men who
know each by marks; and they shall cry out to the fellows of Paradise,
'Peace] be upon you!' they cannot enter it although they so desire.
But when their sight is turned towards the fellows of the Fire, they
say, 'O our Lord! place us not with the unjust people.' And the
fellows on al Aaraf will cry out to the men whom they know by their
marks, and say, 'Of no avail to you were your collections, and what ye
were so big with pride about; are these those ye swore that God
would not extend mercy to? Enter ye Paradise; there is no fear for
The Koran |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: of the mist--and with respect to knowledge we are all children of
the mist. The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to
all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker. "That is
active duty," says the Vishnu Purana, "which is not for our
bondage; that is knowledge which is for our liberation: all other
duty is good only unto weariness; all other knowledge is only the
cleverness of an artist."
It is remarkable how few events or crises there are in our
histories, how little exercised we have been in our minds, how
few experiences we have had. I would fain be assured that I am
growing apace and rankly, though my very growth disturb this dull
Walking |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: reason to suppose that in the fairest works of Greek art, Plato ever
conceived himself to behold an image, however faint, of ideal truths. 'Not
in that way was wisdom seen.'
We may now pass on to the second part of the Dialogue, which is a criticism
on the first. Rhetoric is assailed on various grounds: first, as desiring
to persuade, without a knowledge of the truth; and secondly, as ignoring
the distinction between certain and probable matter. The three speeches
are then passed in review: the first of them has no definition of the
nature of love, and no order in the topics (being in these respects far
inferior to the second); while the third of them is found (though a fancy
of the hour) to be framed upon real dialectical principles. But dialectic
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