| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: consciousness of a question that he would have allowed to shape
itself had he dared. What did everything mean--what, that is, did
SHE mean, she and her vain waiting and her probable death and the
soundless admonition of it all--unless that, at this time of day,
it was simply, it was overwhelmingly too late? He had never at any
stage of his queer consciousness admitted the whisper of such a
correction; he had never till within these last few months been so
false to his conviction as not to hold that what was to come to him
had time, whether HE struck himself as having it or not. That at
last, at last, he certainly hadn't it, to speak of, or had it but
in the scantiest measure--such, soon enough, as things went with
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: understand, and which every one must learn for himself.
There seem to be altogether three aims or interests in this little
Dialogue: (1) the dialectical development of the idea of piety; (2) the
antithesis of true and false religion, which is carried to a certain extent
only; (3) the defence of Socrates.
The subtle connection with the Apology and the Crito; the holding back of
the conclusion, as in the Charmides, Lysis, Laches, Protagoras, and other
Dialogues; the deep insight into the religious world; the dramatic power
and play of the two characters; the inimitable irony, are reasons for
believing that the Euthyphro is a genuine Platonic writing. The spirit in
which the popular representations of mythology are denounced recalls
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: It shall hum in your waking head,
The name - Ticonderoga,
And the warning of the dead."
Now when the night was over
And the time of people's fears,
The Cameron walked abroad,
And the word was in his ears.
"Many a name I know,
But never a name like this;
O, where shall I find a skilly man
Shall tell me what it is?"
Ballads |
