| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs: cuisse and jambe to thigh and leg. The open forges
of armorer and smithy smoked and hissed, and the din
of hammer on anvil rose above the thousand lesser noises
of the castle courts, the shouting of commands, the rat-
tle of steel, the ringing of iron hoof on stone flags,
as these artificers hastened, sweating and cursing,
through the eleventh hour repairs to armor, lance and
sword, or to reset a shoe upon a refractory, plunging
beast.
Finally the captains came, armored cap-a-pie, and
with them some semblance of order and quiet out of
The Outlaw of Torn |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: to contribute to the improvement of mankind. He has not followed out the
principle which he affirms in the Republic, that 'God is the author of evil
only with a view to good,' and that 'they were the better for being
punished.' Still his doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments
may be compared favourably with that perversion of Christian doctrine which
makes the everlasting punishment of human beings depend on a brief moment
of time, or even on the accident of an accident. And he has escaped the
difficulty which has often beset divines, respecting the future destiny of
the meaner sort of men (Thersites and the like), who are neither very good
nor very bad, by not counting them worthy of eternal damnation.
We do Plato violence in pressing his figures of speech or chains of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare: Rob. The King doth keepe his Reuels here to night,
Take heed the Queene come not within his sight,
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she, as her attendant, hath
A louely boy stolne from an Indian King,
She neuer had so sweet a changeling,
And iealous Oberon would haue the childe
Knight of his traine, to trace the Forrests wilde.
But she (perforce) with-holds the loued boy,
Crownes him with flowers, and makes him all her ioy.
And now they neuer meete in groue, or greene,
A Midsummer Night's Dream |
