| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: And every light occasion of the wind
Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls.
What's sweet to do, to do will aptly find:
Each eye that saw him did enchant the mind;
For on his visage was in little drawn,
What largeness thinks in paradise was sawn.
'Small show of man was yet upon his chin;
His phoenix down began but to appear,
Like unshorn velvet, on that termless skin,
Whose bare out-bragg'd the web it seemed to wear:
Yet show'd his visage by that cost more dear;
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: Not very different from Descartes in his relation to ancient philosophy is
his successor Spinoza, who lived in the following generation. The system
of Spinoza is less personal and also less dualistic than that of Descartes.
In this respect the difference between them is like that between Xenophanes
and Parmenides. The teaching of Spinoza might be described generally as
the Jewish religion reduced to an abstraction and taking the form of the
Eleatic philosophy. Like Parmenides, he is overpowered and intoxicated
with the idea of Being or God. The greatness of both philosophies consists
in the immensity of a thought which excludes all other thoughts; their
weakness is the necessary separation of this thought from actual existence
and from practical life. In neither of them is there any clear opposition
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: had not yet awakened, but an indefinable stir already
preluded the noise and business of the day. The ghouls had
come later than usual, and they seemed more than usually
eager to be gone. Fettes, sick with sleep, lighted them
upstairs. He heard their grumbling Irish voices through a
dream; and as they stripped the sack from their sad
merchandise he leaned dozing, with his shoulder propped
against the wall; he had to shake himself to find the men
their money. As he did so his eyes lighted on the dead face.
He started; he took two steps nearer, with the candle raised.
'God Almighty!' he cried. 'That is Jane Galbraith!'
|
