| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: men all have enough and to spare. I alone seem to have lost
everything. My mind is that of a stupid man; I am in a state of
chaos.
Ordinary men look bright and intelligent, while I alone seem to be
benighted. They look full of discrimination, while I alone am dull
and confused. I seem to be carried about as on the sea, drifting as
if I had nowhere to rest. All men have their spheres of action, while
I alone seem dull and incapable, like a rude borderer. (Thus) I alone
am different from other men, but I value the nursing-mother (the Tao).
21. The grandest forms of active force
From Tao come, their only source.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Take your war-club, Puggawaugun,
And your mittens, Minjekahwun,
And your birch-canoe for sailing,
And the oil of Mishe-Nahma,
So to smear its sides, that swiftly
You may pass the black pitch-water;
Slay this merciless magician,
Save the people from the fever
That he breathes across the fen-lands,
And avenge my father's murder!"
Straightway then my Hiawatha
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: counterbalance the whole value of the commoner's "donation."[11]
[11] Or, "half the great man's 'bounty' more than outweighs the small
man's present." For {dorema} cf. Aristot. "N. E." I. ix. 2,
"happiness . . . a free gift of God to men."
Nay, as it seems to me, an honour from the gods, a grace divine, is
shed about the path of him the hero-ruler.[12] Not only does command
itself ennoble manhood, but we gaze on him with other eyes and find
the fair within him yet more fair who is to-day a prince and was but
yesterday a private citizen.[13] Again, it is a prouder satisfaction
doubtless to hold debate with those who are preferred to us in honour
than with people on an equal footing with ourselves.
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