| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: cannot save a nation. Muscle is wanted besides brain, and
the great bulk of those who can provide muscle are difficult
to move to enthusiasm by any broad schemes of economic
rearrangement that do not promise immediate improvement
in their own material conditions. Industrial conscription
cannot be enforced in Russia unless there is among the
conscripted themselves an understanding, although a
resentful understanding, of its necessity. The Russians have
not got an army of Martians to enforce effort on an alien
people. The army and the people are one. "We are bound
to admit," says Trotsky, "that no wide industrial mobilization
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: way. I had scarcely done this, and turned with the intention of
exploring the street, when the door behind me creaked on its
leather hinges, and in a moment the host stood at my elbow, and
gave me a surly greeting.
Evidently his suspicions were again aroused, for from this time
he managed to be with me, on one pretence or another until noon.
Moreover, his manner grew each moment more churlish, his hints
plainer; until I could scarcely avoid noticing the one or the
other. About mid-day, having followed me for the twentieth time
into the street, he came to the point by asking me rudely if I
did not need my horse.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: there anything new in all this? Is not this ignorance the cause
of all the mistakes and mischances of men since the human race
began? . . ."
"This is all I have to say to you, and even this against the
grain. Why? Because you have not stirred my spirit. For what can
I see in you to stir me, as a spirited horse will stir a judge of
horses? Your body? That you maltreat. Your dress? That is
luxurious. You behavior, your look?--Nothing whatever. When you
want to hear a philosopher, do not say, You say nothing to me';
only show yourself worthy or fit to hear, and then you will see
how you will move the speaker."
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
