| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: world has almost entirely passed away from us, that the artist
dwells no longer in the midst of the lovely surroundings which, in
ages past, were the natural inheritance of every one, and that art
is very difficult in this unlovely town of ours, where, as you go
to your work in the morning, or return from it at eventide, you
have to pass through street after street of the most foolish and
stupid architecture that the world has ever seen; architecture,
where every lovely Greek form is desecrated and defiled, and every
lovely Gothic form defiled and desecrated, reducing three-fourths
of the London houses to being, merely, like square boxes of the
vilest proportions, as gaunt as they are grimy, and as poor as they
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: tradition, especially if it takes the form and uses the language of
inductive philosophy. The fact therefore that such a science exists and is
popular, affords no evidence of its truth or value. Many who have pursued
it far into detail have never examined the foundations on which it rests.
The have been many imaginary subjects of knowledge of which enthusiastic
persons have made a lifelong study, without ever asking themselves what is
the evidence for them, what is the use of them, how long they will last?
They may pass away, like the authors of them, and 'leave not a wrack
behind;' or they may survive in fragments. Nor is it only in the Middle
Ages, or in the literary desert of China or of India, that such systems
have arisen; in our own enlightened age, growing up by the side of Physics,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: which it was my endeavour to make you propose earnestly to
yourselves, namely, WHY to Read. I want you to feel, with me, that
whatever advantages we possess in the present day in the diffusion
of education and of literature, can only be rightly used by any of
us when we have apprehended clearly what education is to lead to,
and literature to teach. I wish you to see that both well-directed
moral training and well-chosen reading lead to the possession of a
power over the ill-guided and illiterate, which is, according to the
measure of it, in the truest sense, KINGLY; conferring indeed the
purest kingship that can exist among men: too many other kingships
(however distinguished by visible insignia or material power) being
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