| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: 'Why, Elfie?'
'Not Elfie to you, Mr. Knight. Oh, because I shall want them.
There, I am silly, I know, to say that! But I have a reason for
not taking them--now.' She kept in the last word for a moment,
intending to imply that her refusal was finite, but somehow the
word slipped out, and undid all the rest.
'You will take them some day?'
'I don't want to.'
'Why don't you want to, Elfride Swancourt?'
'Because I don't. I don't like to take them.'
'I have read a fact of distressing significance in that,' said
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: to get rid of matter or to find absorption in the divine nature, or in the
Soul of the universe. And therefore we are not surprised to find that his
philosophy in the Timaeus returns at last to a worship of the heavens, and
that to him, as to other Greeks, nature, though containing a remnant of
evil, is still glorious and divine. He takes away or drops the veil of
mythology, and presents her to us in what appears to him to be the form-
fairer and truer far--of mathematical figures. It is this element in the
Timaeus, no less than its affinity to certain Pythagorean speculations,
which gives it a character not wholly in accordance with the other
dialogues of Plato.
(b) The Timaeus contains an assertion perhaps more distinct than is found
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: This is not marriage that he's committing. You're pronouncing your
blessing upon a fraud.'"
John sat now a long time silent, holding his extinct cigar. The lamp was
almost burned dry; we had blown out the expiring candles some while
since. "That is a very curious view," he repeated. "I should like to hear
what your friend says in answer."
This finished our late sitting. We opened the door and went out for a
brief space into the night to get its pure breath into our lungs, and
look to the distant place where the moon had sailed. Then we went to bed,
or rather, I did; for the last thing that I remembered was John, standing
by the window of our bedroom still dressed, looking out into the forest.
|
