| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: in defending their country from oppression. The
sound of the trumpet wakes Judah no longer, and
her despised children are now but the unresisting
victims of hostile and military oppression. Well
hast thou spoken, Sir Knight,---until the God of
Jacob shall raise up for his chosen people a second
Gideon, or a new Maccabeus, it ill beseemeth the
Jewish damsel to speak of battle or of war.''
The high-minded maiden concluded the argument
in a tone of sorrow, which deeply expressed
her sense of the degradation of her people, embittered
Ivanhoe |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne: "to my thinking we must class this circumstance with the others
for which we still seek elucidation, although it is no doubt
possible to explain it by natural causes."
"I am quite of your mind, Mr. James," replied Simon, "but take my advice,
and say nothing about it; let us make all researches ourselves."
"Oh, I know the result of such research beforehand!" cried the engineer.
"And what will it be, then?"
"We shall find proofs of malevolence, but not the malefactor."
"But he exists! he is there! Where can he lie concealed?
Is it possible to conceive that the most depraved human being could,
single-handed, carry out an idea so infernal as that of bursting
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: The first rule of good speaking is to know and speak the truth; as a
Spartan proverb says, 'true art is truth'; whereas rhetoric is an art of
enchantment, which makes things appear good and evil, like and unlike, as
the speaker pleases. Its use is not confined, as people commonly suppose,
to arguments in the law courts and speeches in the assembly; it is rather a
part of the art of disputation, under which are included both the rules of
Gorgias and the eristic of Zeno. But it is not wholly devoid of truth.
Superior knowledge enables us to deceive another by the help of
resemblances, and to escape from such a deception when employed against
ourselves. We see therefore that even in rhetoric an element of truth is
required. For if we do not know the truth, we can neither make the gradual
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