| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: age or want of capacity is an impediment. And I must repeat one thing
which they said, for your especial benefit,--that the learning of their art
did not at all interfere with the business of money-making.
CRITO: Truly, Socrates, though I am curious and ready to learn, yet I fear
that I am not like-minded with Euthydemus, but one of the other sort, who,
as you were saying, would rather be refuted by such arguments than use them
in refutation of others. And though I may appear ridiculous in venturing
to advise you, I think that you may as well hear what was said to me by a
man of very considerable pretensions--he was a professor of legal oratory--
who came away from you while I was walking up and down. 'Crito,' said he
to me, 'are you giving no attention to these wise men?' 'No, indeed,' I
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: firmament, upon which the moon, like a vast screen, made an
enormous black hole. But at length a painful sensation drew
them from their watchings. This was an intense cold, which soon
covered the inside of the glass of the scuttles with a thick
coating of ice. The sun was no longer warming the projectile
with its direct rays, and thus it was losing the heat stored up
in its walls by degrees. This heat was rapidly evaporating into
space by radiation, and a considerably lower temperature was
the result. The humidity of the interior was changed into ice
upon contact with the glass, preventing all observation.
Nicholl consulted the thermometer, and saw that it had fallen to
From the Earth to the Moon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: people pay us more deference than they did, which suggests a doubt
at times whether we may not have changed; small boys of a succeeding
generation treat us with a respect that causes us inwardly to smile,
as we think how little we differ from them, if they but knew it.
For at bottom we are not conscious of change from that morning, long
ago, when first we realized ourselves. We feel just as young now as
we felt old then. We are but amused at the world's discrimination
where we can detect no difference.
Every human being has been thus "twice born": once as matter, once
as mind. Nor is this second birth the birthright only of mankind.
All the higher animals probably, possibly even the lower too, have
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