| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Economist by Xenophon: earth rather than be reckoned as wealth.[13] But now, what shall we
say of friends? If a man knows how to use his friends so as to be
benefited by them, what of these?
[13] Or, "then let it be relegated . . . and there let it lie in the
category of non-wealth."
Crit. They are wealth indisputably, and in a deeper sense than cattle
are, if, as may be supposed, they are likely to prove of more benefit
to a man than wealth of cattle.
Soc. It would seem, according to your argument, that the foes of a
man's own household after all may be wealth to him, if he knows how to
turn them to good account?[14]
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: a consequence.
When Professor Tyndall in one of his lectures tells us that
Thomas Carlyle put him into his bath-tub every morning of a
freezing Berlin winter, he proclaimed one of the lowest grades of
asceticism. Even without Carlyle, most of us find it necessary
to our soul's health to start the day with a rather cool
immersion. A little farther along the scale we get such
statements as this, from one of my correspondents, an agnostic:--
"Often at night in my warm bed I would feel ashamed to depend so
on the warmth, and whenever the thought would come over me I
would have to get up, no matter what time of night it was, and
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: your horse to the pine-tree, and entered resolutely in by the door.
Within, it was dark; but in my dream I could still see you, and
still besought you to hold back. You felt your way along the
right-hand wall, took a branching passage to the right, and came to
a little chamber, where was a well with a railing. At this - I
know not why - my alarm for you increased a thousandfold, so that I
seemed to scream myself hoarse with warnings, crying it was still
time, and bidding you begone at once from that vestibule. Such was
the word I used in my dream, and it seemed then to have a clear
significancy; but to-day, and awake, I profess I know not what it
means. To all my outcry you rendered not the least attention,
|
