| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: rats knew what was coming now. One of them was leaping up and down, the
other, an old scaly grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink
hands against the bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston could see
the whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black panic took hold of him.
He was blind, helpless, mindless.
'It was a common punishment in Imperial China,' said O'Brien as
didactically as ever.
The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek. And then--no,
it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps
too late. But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was
just ONE person to whom he could transfer his punishment--ONE body that he
1984 |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: Egyptian tale: (5) the remark that the armed statue of Athena indicated
the common warrior life of men and women: (6) the particularity with which
the third deluge before that of Deucalion is affirmed to have been the
great destruction: (7) the happy guess that great geological changes have
been effected by water: (8) the indulgence of the prejudice against
sailing beyond the Columns, and the popular belief of the shallowness of
the ocean in that part: (9) the confession that the depth of the ditch in
the Island of Atlantis was not to be believed, and 'yet he could only
repeat what he had heard', compared with the statement made in an earlier
passage that Poseidon, being a God, found no difficulty in contriving the
water-supply of the centre island: (10) the mention of the old rivalry of
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: further point which I wish you to consider.
What point?
You remember that passion or spirit appeared at first sight to be a kind of
desire, but now we should say quite the contrary; for in the conflict of
the soul spirit is arrayed on the side of the rational principle.
Most assuredly.
But a further question arises: Is passion different from reason also, or
only a kind of reason; in which latter case, instead of three principles in
the soul, there will only be two, the rational and the concupiscent; or
rather, as the State was composed of three classes, traders, auxiliaries,
counsellors, so may there not be in the individual soul a third element
The Republic |
