| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: exceeded by itself, but will be on an equality with and equal to itself.
Certainly.
Then the one will be equal both to itself and the others?
Clearly so.
And yet the one, being itself in itself, will also surround and be without
itself; and, as containing itself, will be greater than itself; and, as
contained in itself, will be less; and will thus be greater and less than
itself.
It will.
Now there cannot possibly be anything which is not included in the one and
the others?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: Abouzaid was necessitated to offend one party by
concurrence, or both by indifference.
He afterwards determined to avoid a close union
with beings so discordant in their nature, and to
diffuse himself in a larger circle. He practised the
smile of universal courtesy, and invited all to his
table, but admitted none to his retirements. Many
who had been rejected in his choice of friendship,
now refused to accept his acquaintance; and of
those whom plenty and magnificence drew to his
table, every one pressed forward toward intimacy,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: lowering with the darkness of a new-born national hatred fostered
by the Moscow school of journalists against the Poles after the
ill-omened rising of 1863.
This is a far cry back from the MS. of "Almayer's Folly," but the
public record of these formative impressions is not the whim of
an uneasy egotism. These, too, are things human, already distant
in their appeal. It is meet that something more should be left
for the novelist's children than the colours and figures of his
own hard-won creation. That which in their grown-up years may
appear to the world about them as the most enigmatic side of
their natures and perhaps must remain for ever obscure even to
Some Reminiscences |
