| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: Can we suppose 'the young man to have told such lies' about his master
while he was still alive? Moreover, when two Dialogues are so closely
connected as the Phaedrus and Symposium, there is great improbability in
supposing that one of them was written at least twenty years after the
other. The conclusion seems to be, that the Dialogue was written at some
comparatively late but unknown period of Plato's life, after he had
deserted the purely Socratic point of view, but before he had entered on
the more abstract speculations of the Sophist or the Philebus. Taking into
account the divisions of the soul, the doctrine of transmigration, the
contemplative nature of the philosophic life, and the character of the
style, we shall not be far wrong in placing the Phaedrus in the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: all your might! The sea is smiling at a squall, the witch! I can feel
the swell by the way the rudder works, and the storm in my wounds."
The nautical phrases, unintelligible to ears unused to the sound of
the sea, seemed to put fresh energy into the oars; they kept time
together, the rhythm of the movement was still even and steady, but
quite unlike the previous manner of rowing; it was as if a cantering
horse had broken into a gallop. The gay company seated in the stern
amused themselves by watching the brawny arms, the tanned faces, and
sparkling eyes of the rowers, the play of the tense muscles, the
physical and mental forces that were being exerted to bring them for a
trifling toll across the channel. So far from pitying the rowers'
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: parties have already gone; and, unless I am mistaken, many more mean to
follow, Marais and Retief and that plotter, Pereira, among them. Let
them go; I say, the sooner the better, for I have no doubt that the
English flag will follow them in due course."
"I hope that they won't," I answered with a nervous laugh; "at any rate,
until I have won back my mare." (I had left her in Retief's care as
stakeholder, until the match should be shot off.)
For the rest of that two and a half hours' trek my father, looking very
dignified and patriotic, declaimed to me loudly about the bad behaviour
of the Boers, who hated and traduced missionaries, loathed and
abominated British rule and permanent officials, loved slavery and
Marie |
