| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: not receive the gods whom the city receives, and has other new divinities'
--but of the interpretation put upon the words by Meletus, who has affirmed
that he is a downright atheist. To this Socrates fairly answers, in
accordance with the ideas of the time, that a downright atheist cannot
believe in the sons of gods or in divine things. The notion that demons or
lesser divinities are the sons of gods is not to be regarded as ironical or
sceptical. He is arguing 'ad hominem' according to the notions of
mythology current in his age. Yet he abstains from saying that he believed
in the gods whom the State approved. He does not defend himself, as
Xenophon has defended him, by appealing to his practice of religion.
Probably he neither wholly believed, nor disbelieved, in the existence of
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: you're likely to have a fling that you won't get up from in a hurry.'
Frances said, when she told grandmother and me about this scene,
that every pan and plate and cup on the shelves trembled when her
mother walked out of the kitchen. Mrs. Harling declared bitterly
that she wished she had never let herself get fond of Antonia.
XI
WICK CUTTER WAS the money-lender who had fleeced poor Russian Peter.
When a farmer once got into the habit of going to Cutter, it was like
gambling or the lottery; in an hour of discouragement he went back.
Cutter's first name was Wycliffe, and he liked to talk about his pious
bringing-up. He contributed regularly to the Protestant churches,
My Antonia |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: "fearless" Austrian officer, departed from Galicia, and without
going near his native place, where the odious lawsuit was still
going on, proceeded straight to Warsaw and entered the army of
the newly constituted Polish kingdom under the sceptre of
Alexander I., Autocrat of all the Russias.
This kingdom, created by the Vienna Congress as an acknowledgment
to a nation of its former independent existence, included only
the central provinces of the old Polish patrimony. A brother of
the Emperor, the Grand Duke Constantine (Pavlovitch), its Viceroy
and Commander-in-Chief, married morganatically to a Polish lady
to whom he was fiercely attached, extended this affection to what
Some Reminiscences |
