| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: frail the great consideration he inspired seemed enough of an
answer to it. But at the bottom of Pemberton's heart was the
recognition of his probably being strong enough to live and not yet
strong enough to struggle or to thrive. Morgan himself at any rate
was in the first flush of the rosiest consciousness of adolescence,
so that the beating of the tempest seemed to him after all but the
voice of life and the challenge of fate. He had on his shabby
little overcoat, with the collar up, but was enjoying his walk.
It was interrupted at last by the appearance of his mother at the
end of the sala. She beckoned him to come to her, and while
Pemberton saw him, complaisant, pass down the long vista and over
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: Eleatic philosophy. The famous theorem of Spinoza, 'Omnis determinatio est
negatio,' is already contained in the 'negation is relation' of Plato's
Sophist. The grand description of the philosopher in Republic VI, as the
spectator of all time and all existence, may be paralleled with another
famous expression of Spinoza, 'Contemplatio rerum sub specie eternitatis.'
According to Spinoza finite objects are unreal, for they are conditioned by
what is alien to them, and by one another. Human beings are included in
the number of them. Hence there is no reality in human action and no place
for right and wrong. Individuality is accident. The boasted freedom of
the will is only a consciousness of necessity. Truth, he says, is the
direction of the reason towards the infinite, in which all things repose;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: and variations of compass with an undertaker?"
"I get your idea, Sandy. He couldn't interest me. He would be an
ignoramus in such things - he would bore me, and I would bore him."
"You have got it. You would bore the patriarchs when you talked,
and when they talked they would shoot over your head. By and by
you would say, 'Good morning, your Eminence, I will call again' -
but you wouldn't. Did you ever ask the slush-boy to come up in the
cabin and take dinner with you?"
"I get your drift again, Sandy. I wouldn't be used to such grand
people as the patriarchs and prophets, and I would be sheepish and
tongue-tied in their company, and mighty glad to get out of it.
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