| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: must be a collective aim. I do not mean an austere demand of self-
sacrifice from the individual, but an adjustment--as genial and
generous as possible--of individual variations for common good.
Otherwise life becomes discordant and futile, and the pain and waste
react on each individual. So we raise again, in the twentieth
century, the old question of 'the greatest good,' which men
discussed in the Stoa Poikile and the suburban groves of Athens, in
the cool atria of patrician mansions on the Palatine and the
Pincian, in the Museum at Alexandria, and the schools which Omar
Khayyam frequented, in the straw-strewn schools of the Middle Ages
and the opulent chambers of Cosimo dei Medici."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: March 399 B.C.
PREPARER'S NOTE
This was typed from Dakyns' series, "The Works of Xenophon," a
four-volume set. The complete list of Xenophon's works (though
there is doubt about some of these) is:
Work Number of books
The Anabasis 7
The Hellenica 7
The Cyropaedia 8
The Memorabilia 4
The Symposium 1
Anabasis |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: which were in use in the Courts, to detect the truth.
Bianchon sat cold and stern, as a man who has made up his mind to
endure torture without revealing his sufferings; but in his heart he
wished that his uncle could only trample on this woman as we trample
on a viper--a comparison suggested to him by the Marquise's long
dress, by the curve of her attitude, her long neck, small head, and
undulating movements.
"Well, monsieur," said Madame d'Espard, "however great my dislike to
be or seem selfish, I have been suffering too long not to wish that
you may settle matters at once. Shall I soon get a favorable
decision?"
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