| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: And thrice the living Cameron
Told the dead Cameron, no.
"Thrice have you seen me, brother,
But now shall see me no more,
Till you meet your angry fathers
Upon the farther shore.
Thrice have I spoken, and now,
Before the cock be heard,
I take my leave for ever
With the naming of a word.
It shall sing in your sleeping ears,
Ballads |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: conquered by the efforts of the degraded themselves. A gentleman
present, distinguished for logical acumen and subtlety, and who
had devoted no small portion of the last twenty-five years to the
study and elucidation of this very question, held the opposite
view, that prejudice is innate and unconquerable. He terminated
a series of well dove-tailed, Socratic questions to Mr. Douglass,
with the following: `If the legislature at Harrisburgh should
awaken, to-morrow morning, and find each man's skin turned black
and his hair woolly, what could they do to remove prejudice?'
`Immediately pass laws entitling black men to all civil,
political and social privileges,' was the instant reply--and the
My Bondage and My Freedom |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: learned anew about heredity and "innateness." As little as the
act of birth comes into consideration in the whole process and
procedure of heredity, just as little is "being-conscious"
OPPOSED to the instinctive in any decisive sense; the greater
part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly
influenced by his instincts, and forced into definite channels.
And behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement,
there are valuations, or to speak more plainly, physiological
demands, for the maintenance of a definite mode of life For
example, that the certain is worth more than the uncertain, that
illusion is less valuable than "truth" such valuations, in spite
Beyond Good and Evil |
