| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: all reason?
Probably it was my basic conviction then - as it
is now during my saner moments - that I was not awake at all,
and that the entire buried city was a fragment of febrile hallucination.
Eventually, I reached the lowest level and struck off to the
right of the incline. For some shadowy reason I tiled to soften
my steps, even though I lost speed thereby. There was a space
I was afraid to cross on this last, deeply buried floor.
As
I drew near it I recalled what thing in that space I feared. It
was merely one of the metal-barred and closely guarded trap-doors.
Shadow out of Time |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: thus, "Besides which they will not suffer their antagonists to
transport goods to countries outside Attica; they must yield, or
they shall not have the use of the sea."
[15] {lobasthai}. This "poetical" word comes to mean "harry,"
"pillage," in the common dialect.
There is just one thing which the Athenians lack. Supposing that they
were the inhabitants of an island,[16] and were still, as now, rulers
of the sea, they would have had it in their power to work whatever
mischief they liked, and to suffer no evil in return (as long as they
kept command of the sea), neither the ravaging of their territory nor
the expectation of an enemy's approach. Whereas at present the farming
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: not the same as the false?
HIPPIAS: Of course, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And is that your own opinion, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: Certainly; how can I have any other?
SOCRATES: Well, then, as there is no possibility of asking Homer what he
meant in these verses of his, let us leave him; but as you show a
willingness to take up his cause, and your opinion agrees with what you
declare to be his, will you answer on behalf of yourself and him?
HIPPIAS: I will; ask shortly anything which you like.
SOCRATES: Do you say that the false, like the sick, have no power to do
things, or that they have the power to do things?
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