| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: No more, he replied, than making or working are the same; thus much I have
learned from Hesiod, who says that 'work is no disgrace.' Now do you
imagine that if he had meant by working and doing such things as you were
describing, he would have said that there was no disgrace in them--for
example, in the manufacture of shoes, or in selling pickles, or sitting for
hire in a house of ill-fame? That, Socrates, is not to be supposed: but I
conceive him to have distinguished making from doing and work; and, while
admitting that the making anything might sometimes become a disgrace, when
the employment was not honourable, to have thought that work was never any
disgrace at all. For things nobly and usefully made he called works; and
such makings he called workings, and doings; and he must be supposed to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: neighbouring planet. And he was met at the place of his descent by
a great philosopher, who was to show him everything.
First of all they came through a wood, and the stranger looked upon
the trees. "Whom have we here?" said he.
"These are only vegetables," said the philosopher. "They are
alive, but not at all interesting."
"I don't know about that," said the stranger. "They seem to have
very good manners. Do they never speak?"
"They lack the gift," said the philosopher.
"Yet I think I hear them sing," said the other.
"That is only the wind among the leaves," said the philosopher. "I
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: ran through the house, to hear a few words from their young master.
To the surprise of all, he appeared among them with a bundle of
papers in his hand, containing a certificate of freedom to every
one on the place, which he read successively, and presented, amid
the sobs and tears and shouts of all present.
Many, however, pressed around him, earnestly begging him not
to send them away; and, with anxious faces, tendering back
their free papers.
"We don't want to be no freer than we are. We's allers had all
we wanted. We don't want to leave de ole place, and Mas'r
and Missis, and de rest!"
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
