| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: questionings of the mind itself, and also receiving a stimulus from the
study of ancient writings.
Considering the great and fundamental differences which exist in ancient
and modern philosophy, it seems best that we should at first study them
separately, and seek for the interpretation of either, especially of the
ancient, from itself only, comparing the same author with himself and with
his contemporaries, and with the general state of thought and feeling
prevalent in his age. Afterwards comes the remoter light which they cast
on one another. We begin to feel that the ancients had the same thoughts
as ourselves, the same difficulties which characterize all periods of
transition, almost the same opposition between science and religion.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my
mind a strange fancy--a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but
mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which
oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to
believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an
atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity--
an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but
which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the grey wall,
and the silent tarn--a pestilent and mystic vapour, dull,
sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream,
The Fall of the House of Usher |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: d'Alcacer. "But believe me, Captain Lingard," he continued,
earnestly, and obeying a perfectly disinterested impulse, "that
even in his delirium he is far more understandable to her and
better able to understand her than . . . anybody within a hundred
miles from here."
"Ah!" said Lingard without any emotion, "so you don't wonder. You
don't see any reason for wonder."
"No, for, don't you see, I do know."
"What do you know?"
"Men and women, Captain Lingard, which you. . . ."
"I don't know any woman."
The Rescue |
