| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: and is of a nature to be a science of something?
Yes.
Just as that which is greater is of a nature to be greater than something
else? (Socrates is intending to show that science differs from the object
of science, as any other relative differs from the object of relation. But
where there is comparison--greater, less, heavier, lighter, and the like--a
relation to self as well as to other things involves an absolute
contradiction; and in other cases, as in the case of the senses, is hardly
conceivable. The use of the genitive after the comparative in Greek,
(Greek), creates an unavoidable obscurity in the translation.)
Yes.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I would go to seek
him forthwith. "A command over our passions, and over the external
senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be
indispensable in the mind's approximation to God." Yet the spirit
can for the time pervade and control every member and function of
the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality
into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are
loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent
invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and
what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but
various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the
Walden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: boatmen in repairing old canoes ceased to interfere with the due
discharge of domestic duties by the women of the Settlement.
Even the baffled Jim-Eng left off troubling his muddled brain
with secrets of trade, and relapsed by the aid of his opium pipe
into a state of stupefied bliss, letting Babalatchi pursue his
way past his house uninvited and seemingly unnoticed.
So on that warm afternoon, when the deserted river sparkled under
the vertical sun, the statesman of Sambir could, without any
hindrance from friendly inquirers, shove off his little canoe
from under the bushes, where it was usually hidden during his
visits to Almayer's compound. Slowly and languidly Babalatchi
Almayer's Folly |
