The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: idealism. Like the ancient Sophists, he relegates the more important
principles of ethics to custom and probability. But crude and unmeaning as
this philosophy is, it exercised a great influence on his successors, not
unlike that which Locke exercised upon Berkeley and Berkeley upon Hume
himself. All three were both sceptical and ideal in almost equal degrees.
Neither they nor their predecessors had any true conception of language or
of the history of philosophy. Hume's paradox has been forgotten by the
world, and did not any more than the scepticism of the ancients require to
be seriously refuted. Like some other philosophical paradoxes, it would
have been better left to die out. It certainly could not be refuted by a
philosophy such as Kant's, in which, no less than in the previously
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: Mirabeau's.
"I have seen such a grand fellow in the street," said I to Juste on
coming in.
"It must be our neighbor," replied Juste, who described, in fact, the
man I had just met. "A man who lives like a wood-louse would be sure
to look like that," he added.
"What dejection and what dignity!"
"One is the consequence of the other."
"What ruined hopes! What schemes and failures!"
"Seven leagues of ruins! Obelisks--palaces--towers!--The ruins of
Palmyra in the desert!" said Juste, laughing.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Redheaded Outfield by Zane Grey: possibility to make them careful, so he held them
close.
The Rube pitched a strike to Manning, then
another. That made eight strikes square over the
plate that inning. What magnificent control! It
was equaled by the implacable patience of those
veteran Bisons. Manning hit the next ball as
hard as Carl had hit his. But Mullaney plunged
down, came up with the ball, feinted to fool Carl,
then let drive to Gregg to catch the fleeting Shultz.
The throw went wide, but Gregg got it, and, leaping
 The Redheaded Outfield |