| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: number of Papists among us.
I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child
(in which list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths
of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags
included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten
shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have
said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he
hath only some particular friend, or his own family to dine with
him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow
popular among his tenants, the mother will have eight shillings
neat profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child.
A Modest Proposal |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: distinction of post hoc and propter hoc, often lost sight of in modern as
well as in ancient times. These metaphysical conceptions and distinctions
show considerable power of thought in the writer, whatever we may think of
his merits as an imitator of Plato.
ERYXIAS
by
Platonic Imitator (see Appendix II above)
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Eryxias, Erasistratus, Critias.
SCENE: The portico of a temple of Zeus.
It happened by chance that Eryxias the Steirian was walking with me in the
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: utter stillness of potency and delicate flesh. How beautiful! How
beautiful! Her hands came timorously down his back, to the soft,
smallish globes of the buttocks. Beauty! What beauty! a sudden little
flame of new awareness went through her. How was it possible, this
beauty here, where she had previously only been repelled? The
unspeakable beauty to the touch of the warm, living buttocks! The life
within life, the sheer warm, potent loveliness. And the strange weight
of the balls between his legs! What a mystery! What a strange heavy
weight of mystery, that could lie soft and heavy in one's hand! The
roots, root of all that is lovely, the primeval root of all full
beauty.
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
