| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: collectively proceed much farther than each by himself could do.
I remarked, moreover, with respect to experiments, that they become always
more necessary the more one is advanced in knowledge; for, at the
commencement, it is better to make use only of what is spontaneously
presented to our senses, and of which we cannot remain ignorant, provided
we bestow on it any reflection, however slight, than to concern ourselves
about more uncommon and recondite phenomena: the reason of which is, that
the more uncommon often only mislead us so long as the causes of the more
ordinary are still unknown; and the circumstances upon which they depend
are almost always so special and minute as to be highly difficult to
detect. But in this I have adopted the following order: first, I have
Reason Discourse |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: not being able to return the Princess the answer that she desired,
he was less and less willing to come into her presence. She
observed his backwardness, and commanded him to attend her. "You
are not," said she, "to confound impatience with resentment, or to
suppose that I charge you with negligence because I repine at your
unsuccessfulness. I do not much wonder at your absence. I know
that the unhappy are never pleasing, and that all naturally avoid
the contagion of misery. To hear complaints is wearisome alike to
the wretched and the happy; for who would cloud by adventitious
grief the short gleams of gaiety which life allows us, or who that
is struggling under his own evils will add to them the miseries of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: such a measure will be that a larger number of persons, and of a
better class, will be attracted to Athens as a place of residence.
[9] Or, "offer the fee simple of such property to."
Lastly, if we could bring ourselves to appoint, as a new government
office, a board of guardians of foreign residents like our Guardians
of Orphans,[10] with special privileges assigned to those guardians
who should show on their books the greatest number of resident aliens
--such a measure would tend to improve the goodwill of the class in
question, and in all probability all people without a city of their
own would aspire to the status of foreign residents in Athens, and so
further increase the revenues of the city.[11]
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