| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: study of which is of more value to the interpreter than all the
commentators and scholiasts put together.
(3) The conclusions at which Dr. Jackson has arrived are such as might be
expected to follow from his method of procedure. For he takes words
without regard to their connection, and pieces together different parts of
dialogues in a purely arbitrary manner, although there is no indication
that the author intended the two passages to be so combined, or that when
he appears to be experimenting on the different points of view from which a
subject of philosophy may be regarded, he is secretly elaborating a system.
By such a use of language any premises may be made to lead to any
conclusion. I am not one of those who believe Plato to have been a mystic
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: It was the death of the just, and he had well merited it as a reward
for his labours in the Holy Land.
Blanche held for his death a great and true mourning, weeping for him
as one weeps for one's father. She remained melancholy, without
wishing to lend her ear to the music of a second wedding, for which
she was praised by all good people, who knew not that she had a
husband in her heart, a life in hope; but she was the greater part of
her time a widow in fact and widow in heart, because hearing no news
of her lover at the Crusades, the poor Countess reputed him dead, and
during certain nights seeing him wounded and lying at full length, she
would wake up in tears. She lived thus for fourteen years in the
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dreams by Olive Schreiner: Then came another, green and gold, who sang in a shrill voice, like one
crying in the marketplace,--"Reward after Death! Reward after Death!"
And he said--
"You are not so fair; but you are fair too," and he took it.
And others came, brightly coloured, singing pleasant songs, till all the
grains were finished. And the hunter gathered all his birds together, and
built a strong iron cage called a new creed, and put all his birds in it.
Then the people came about dancing and singing.
"Oh, happy hunter!" they cried. "Oh, wonderful man! Oh, delightful birds!
Oh, lovely songs!"
No one asked where the birds had come from, nor how they had been caught;
|
