| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: communication with the deserted web. All of them have one, in
point of fact, but only when age comes, age prone to rest and to
long slumbers. In their youth, the Epeirae, who are then very
wide-awake, know nothing of the art of telegraphy. Besides, their
web, a short-lived work whereof hardly a trace remains on the
morrow, does not allow of this kind of industry. It is no use
going to the expense of a signalling-apparatus for a ruined snare
wherein nothing can now be caught. Only the old Spiders,
meditating or dozing in their green tent, are warned from afar, by
telegraph, of what takes place on the web.
To save herself from keeping a close watch that would degenerate
The Life of the Spider |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: This Thermodon, they say, is a little rivulet here in our
country in Chaeronea, running into the Cephisus. But we know of
none that is so called at the present time; and can only
conjecture that the streamlet which is now called Haemon, and
runs by the Temple of Hercules, where the Grecians were
encamped, might perhaps in those days be called Thermodon, and
after the fight, being filled with blood and dead bodies, upon
this occasion, as we guess, might change its old name for that
which it now bears. Yet Duris says that this Thermodon was no
river, but that some of the soldiers, as they were pitching
their tents and digging trenches about them, found a small stone
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: discuss the matter with you.
SOCRATES: Then imagine, my dear fellow, that I am the demus and the
ecclesia; for in the ecclesia, too, you will have to persuade men
individually.
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And is not the same person able to persuade one individual
singly and many individuals of the things which he knows? The grammarian,
for example, can persuade one and he can persuade many about letters.
ALCIBIADES: True.
SOCRATES: And about number, will not the same person persuade one and
persuade many?
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