| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: Lake of the biology department, Atwood of the physics department
- also a meteorologist - and myself, representing geology and
having nominal command - besides sixteen assistants: seven graduate
students from Miskatonic and nine skilled mechanics. Of these
sixteen, twelve were qualified aeroplane pilots, all but two of
whom were competent wireless operators. Eight of them understood
navigation with compass and sextant, as did Pabodie, Atwood, and
I. In addition, of course, our two ships - wooden ex-whalers,
reinforced for ice conditions and having auxiliary steam - were
fully manned.
The Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation, aided
At the Mountains of Madness |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: is. There is no room for aspiration and no need of any: 'What is actual
is rational, what is rational is actual.' But a good man will not readily
acquiesce in this aphorism. He knows of course that all things proceed
according to law whether for good or evil. But when he sees the misery and
ignorance of mankind he is convinced that without any interruption of the
uniformity of nature the condition of the world may be indefinitely
improved by human effort. There is also an adaptation of persons to times
and countries, but this is very far from being the fulfilment of their
higher natures. The man of the seventeenth century is unfitted for the
eighteenth, and the man of the eighteenth for the nineteenth, and most of
us would be out of place in the world of a hundred years hence. But all
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: PROTARCHUS: Let us boldly return this answer to the masters of whom you
speak, Socrates, and hope for good luck.
SOCRATES: We have explained what we term the most exact arts or sciences.
PROTARCHUS: Very good.
SOCRATES: And yet, Protarchus, dialectic will refuse to acknowledge us, if
we do not award to her the first place.
PROTARCHUS: And pray, what is dialectic?
SOCRATES: Clearly the science which has to do with all that knowledge of
which we are now speaking; for I am sure that all men who have a grain of
intelligence will admit that the knowledge which has to do with being and
reality, and sameness and unchangeableness, is by far the truest of all.
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