| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: hearing or some other sense (for the meaning of perceiving through the body
is perceiving through the senses)--were we not saying that the soul too is
then dragged by the body into the region of the changeable, and wanders and
is confused; the world spins round her, and she is like a drunkard, when
she touches change?
Very true.
But when returning into herself she reflects, then she passes into the
other world, the region of purity, and eternity, and immortality, and
unchangeableness, which are her kindred, and with them she ever lives, when
she is by herself and is not let or hindered; then she ceases from her
erring ways, and being in communion with the unchanging is unchanging. And
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: I should have taken notice here that, notwithstanding the violence of
the plague in London and in other places, yet it was very observable
that it was never on board the fleet; and yet for some time there was a
strange press in the river, and even in the streets, for seamen to man
the fleet. But it was in the beginning of the year, when the plague was
scarce begun, and not at all come down to that part of the city where
they usually press for seamen; and though a war with the Dutch was
not at all grateful to the people at that time, and the seamen went with
a kind of reluctancy into the service, and many complained of being
dragged into it by force, yet it proved in the event a happy violence to
several of them, who had probably perished in the general calamity,
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: Spoke not, nor stirred.
By this a murmur ran
Through all the camp and inward raced the scouts
With rumour of Prince Arab hard at hand.
We left her by the woman, and without
Found the gray kings at parle: and 'Look you' cried
My father 'that our compact be fulfilled:
You have spoilt this child; she laughs at you and man:
She wrongs herself, her sex, and me, and him:
But red-faced war has rods of steel and fire;
She yields, or war.'
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