| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: her neck, outlining a carapace, as it were, which would make an
ordinary woman look like a turtle, but which in her sets off the most
beautiful forms while concealing them. How does she do it? This secret
she keeps, though unguarded by any patent.
"As she walks she gives herself a little concentric and harmonious
twist, which makes her supple or dangerous slenderness writhe under
the stuff, as a snake does under the green gauze of trembling grass.
Is it to an angel or a devil that she owes the graceful undulation
which plays under her long black silk cape, stirs its lace frill,
sheds an airy balm, and what I should like to call the breeze of a
Parisienne? You may recognize over her arms, round her waist, about
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: first syllable of my name:--Theaetetus, he says, what is SO?
THEAETETUS: I should reply S and O.
SOCRATES: That is the definition which you would give of the syllable?
THEAETETUS: I should.
SOCRATES: I wish that you would give me a similar definition of the S.
THEAETETUS: But how can any one, Socrates, tell the elements of an
element? I can only reply, that S is a consonant, a mere noise, as of the
tongue hissing; B, and most other letters, again, are neither vowel-sounds
nor noises. Thus letters may be most truly said to be undefined; for even
the most distinct of them, which are the seven vowels, have a sound only,
but no definition at all.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Apology by Xenophon: [45] Or, "must have a heavy load on their minds in the consciousness
of their impiety and injustice."
"And then the young--how could I corrupt them by habituating them to
manliness and frugality? since not even my accusers themselves allege
against me that I have committed any of those deeds[46] of which death
is the penalty, such as robbery of temples,[47] breaking into houses,
selling freemen into slavery, or betrayal of the state; so that I must
still ask myself in wonderment how it has been proved to you that I
have done a deed worthy of death. Nor yet again because I die
innocently is that a reason why I should lower my crest, for that is a
blot not upon me but upon those who condemned me.
The Apology |
