| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: wanted to tell a falsehood, and not to answer truly? Would the ignorant
man be better able to tell a falsehood in matters of calculation than you
would be, if you chose? Might he not sometimes stumble upon the truth,
when he wanted to tell a lie, because he did not know, whereas you who are
the wise man, if you wanted to tell a lie would always and consistently
lie?
HIPPIAS: Yes, there you are quite right.
SOCRATES: Does the false man tell lies about other things, but not about
number, or when he is making a calculation?
HIPPIAS: To be sure; he would tell as many lies about number as about
other things.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs: body to the eyes of swine."
The knights, at first taken back by this unexpected
outbreak, finally burst into uproarious laughter.
"Indeed," cried Paul of Merely, "spoken as one of
the King's foreign favorites might speak, and they ever
told the good God's truth. But come lad, we would
not harm you--do as I bid."
"No man lives who can harm me while a blade hangs
at my side," answered the boy, "and as for doing as
you bid, I take orders from no man other than my
father."
The Outlaw of Torn |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: overtaken him. There had been nothing yet that made him so much
want to give up. He had of course by this time well reached the
age of renouncement; but it had not hitherto been vivid to him that
it was time to give up everything.
Practically, at the end of six months, he had renounced the
friendship once so charming and comforting. His privation had two
faces, and the face it had turned to him on the occasion of his
last attempt to cultivate that friendship was the one he could look
at least. This was the privation he inflicted; the other was the
privation he bore. The conditions she never phrased he used to
murmur to himself in solitude: "One more, one more - only just
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