| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: growing success in it, and receive a further reward, unperceived
at first, but very joyful after, in being loved by others.
So I advise you, Friend Ilyá, and both of you, to live
and to think as sincerely as you can, because it is the only way
you can discover if you are really going along the same road, and
whether it is wise to join hands or not; and at the same time, if
you are sincere, you must be making your future ready.
Your purpose in life must not be the joy of wedlock, but, by
your life to bring more love and truth into the world. The object
of marriage is to help one another in the attainment of that
purpose.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Iliad by Homer: they saw the captain of their horsemen (the best man they had)
laid low, and I swept down on them like a whirlwind, taking fifty
chariots--and in each of them two men bit the dust, slain by my
spear. I should have even killed the two Moliones, sons of Actor,
unless their real father, Neptune lord of the earthquake, had
hidden them in a thick mist and borne them out of the fight.
Thereon Jove vouchsafed the Pylians a great victory, for we
chased them far over the plain, killing the men and bringing in
their armour, till we had brought our horses to Buprasium, rich
in wheat, and to the Olenian rock, with the hill that is called
Alision, at which point Minerva turned the people back. There I
The Iliad |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: I dare say that you may be disposed to regard as a fable only, but which,
as I believe, is a true tale, for I mean to speak the truth. Homer tells
us (Il.), how Zeus and Poseidon and Pluto divided the empire which they
inherited from their father. Now in the days of Cronos there existed a law
respecting the destiny of man, which has always been, and still continues
to be in Heaven,--that he who has lived all his life in justice and
holiness shall go, when he is dead, to the Islands of the Blessed, and
dwell there in perfect happiness out of the reach of evil; but that he who
has lived unjustly and impiously shall go to the house of vengeance and
punishment, which is called Tartarus. And in the time of Cronos, and even
quite lately in the reign of Zeus, the judgment was given on the very day
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