| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: people, condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of
the past, and now startingly recalled from that tender exercise;
happy family parties struck into silence round the table, the
mother still with raised finger: every degree and age and humour,
but all, by their own hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving
the rope that was to hang him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could
not move too softly; the clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang
out loudly like a bell; and alarmed by the bigness of the ticking,
he was tempted to stop the clocks. And then, again, with a swift
transition of his terrors, the very silence of the place appeared a
source of peril, and a thing to strike and freeze the passer-by;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: sometimes, though very excusably, presumptuously so."
"I do not understand," said Ravenswood, "how a consciouness of
innocence can be, in any case, accounted presumtuous."
"Imprudent, at least, it may be called," said Sir William
Ashton, "since it is apt to lead us into the mistake of
supposeing that sufficiently evident to others of which, in fact,
we are only conscious ourselves. I have known a rogue, for this
very reason, make a better defence than an innocent man could
have done in the same circumstances of suspicion. Having no
consciousness of innocence to support him, such a fellow applies
himself to all the advantages which the law will afford him, and
The Bride of Lammermoor |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: what you do with a part of virtue; for justice and the like are said by you
to be parts of virtue.
MENO: What of that?
SOCRATES: What of that! Why, did not I ask you to tell me the nature of
virtue as a whole? And you are very far from telling me this; but declare
every action to be virtue which is done with a part of virtue; as though
you had told me and I must already know the whole of virtue, and this too
when frittered away into little pieces. And, therefore, my dear Meno, I
fear that I must begin again and repeat the same question: What is virtue?
for otherwise, I can only say, that every action done with a part of virtue
is virtue; what else is the meaning of saying that every action done with
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