| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: ungrateful, he turned Rocinante's head and approached the hole, and as
he perceived the two wenches he said:
"I pity you, beauteous lady, that you should have directed your
thoughts of love to a quarter from whence it is impossible that such a
return can be made to you as is due to your great merit and gentle
birth, for which you must not blame this unhappy knight-errant whom
love renders incapable of submission to any other than her whom, the
first moment his eyes beheld her, he made absolute mistress of his
soul. Forgive me, noble lady, and retire to your apartment, and do
not, by any further declaration of your passion, compel me to show
myself more ungrateful; and if, of the love you bear me, you should
Don Quixote |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: is the Socrates of the Apology and Symposium, not yet Platonized; and he
describes, as in the Theaetetus, the philosophy of Heracleitus by
'unsavoury' similes--he cannot believe that the world is like 'a leaky
vessel,' or 'a man who has a running at the nose'; he attributes the flux
of the world to the swimming in some folks' heads. On the other hand, the
relation of thought to language is omitted here, but is treated of in the
Sophist. These grounds are not sufficient to enable us to arrive at a
precise conclusion. But we shall not be far wrong in placing the Cratylus
about the middle, or at any rate in the first half, of the series.
Cratylus, the Heracleitean philosopher, and Hermogenes, the brother of
Callias, have been arguing about names; the former maintaining that they
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Mutiny on the high sea may have been common a hundred
years ago, but in this good year 1888 it is the least likely
of happenings.
"But there goes the captain to his cabin now. If I am going
to warn him I might as well get the beastly job over for I
have little stomach to talk with the brute at all."
So saying he strolled carelessly in the direction of the
companionway through which the captain had passed, and a
moment later was knocking at his door.
"Come in," growled the deep tones of that surly officer.
And when Clayton had entered, and closed the door behind him:
Tarzan of the Apes |
