| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: all, I think, the darkness must be taken away in which your soul is now
enveloped, just as Athene in Homer removes the mist from the eyes of
Diomede that
'He may distinguish between God and mortal man.'
Afterwards the means may be given to you whereby you may distinguish
between good and evil. At present, I fear, this is beyond your power.
ALCIBIADES: Only let my instructor take away the impediment, whether it
pleases him to call it mist or anything else! I care not who he is; but I
am resolved to disobey none of his commands, if I am likely to be the
better for them.
SOCRATES: And surely he has a wondrous care for you.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: the central region, takes up the thread; and we see it, not without
some surprise, draw nearer to the pole in ever-narrowing and
scarcely perceptible circles. There is not, of course, absolute
mathematical accuracy, but a very close approximation to that
accuracy. The Epeira winds nearer and nearer round her pole, so
far as her equipment, which, like our own, is defective, will allow
her. One would believe her to be thoroughly versed in the laws of
the spiral.
I will continue to set forth, without explanations, some of the
properties of this curious curve. Picture a flexible thread wound
round a logarithmic spiral. If we then unwind it, keeping it taut
The Life of the Spider |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: wonderful contrivances. Shut--open. Very neat. Shut--open. And
out comes some sort of corpse, to wander awfully in a world in which
it has no possible connections and carrying with it the appalling
tainted atmosphere of its silent abode. Marvellous arrangement. It
works automatically, and, when you look at it, the perfection makes
you sick; which for a mere mechanism is no mean triumph. Sick and
scared. It had nearly scared that poor girl to her death. Fancy
having to take such a thing by the hand! Now I understood the
remorseful strain I had detected in her speeches.
"By Jove!" I said. "They are about to let him out! I never thought
of that."
Chance |
