| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: of which you speak."
It seemed incredible, and yet it was true. These people
living at the very seat of the Great War knew nothing of it,
though but two centuries had passed since, to our knowledge,
it had been running in the height of its titanic
frightfulness all about them, and to us upon the far side of
the Atlantic still was a subject of keen interest.
Here was a lifelong inhabitant of the Isle of Wight who
never had heard of either Germany or England! I turned to
him quite suddenly with a new question.
"What people live upon the mainland?" I asked, and pointed
Lost Continent |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: stand in front of the machine and the tailor
muttered some instructions to the crop-haired lad,
who answered in guttural tones and with words
Graham did not recognise. The boy then went
to conduct an incomprehensible monologue in the
corner, and the tailor pulled out a number of slotted
arms terminating in little discs, pulling them out until
the discs were flat against the body of Graham, one
at each shoulder blade, one at the elbows, one at the
neck and so forth, so that at last there were, perhaps,
two score of them upon his body and limbs. At the
When the Sleeper Wakes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: explanation of the negative and the principle of contradiction. Neither
the Platonic notion of the negative as the principle of difference, nor the
Hegelian identity of Being and Not-being, at all touch the principle of
contradiction. For what is asserted about Being and Not-Being only relates
to our most abstract notions, and in no way interferes with the principle
of contradiction employed in the concrete. Because Not-being is identified
with Other, or Being with Not-being, this does not make the proposition
'Some have not eaten' any the less a contradiction of 'All have eaten.'
The explanation of the negative given by Plato in the Sophist is a true but
partial one; for the word 'not,' besides the meaning of 'other,' may also
imply 'opposition.' And difference or opposition may be either total or
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