| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: consciousness of the human race, embodied in language, acknowledged by
experience, and corrected from time to time by the influence of literature
and philosophy. A great, perhaps the most important, part of it is to be
found in early Greek thought. In the Theaetetus of Plato it has not yet
become fixed: we are still stumbling on the threshold. In Aristotle the
process is more nearly completed, and has gained innumerable abstractions,
of which many have had to be thrown away because relative only to the
controversies of the time. In the interval between Thales and Aristotle
were realized the distinctions of mind and body, of universal and
particular, of infinite and infinitesimal, of idea and phenomenon; the
class conceptions of faculties and virtues, the antagonism of the appetites
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: spread over the heaven, extinguishing the crimson glow of floating
clouds and the red brilliance of departing daylight. In a few moments
all the stars came out above the intense blackness of the earth and
the great lagoon gleaming suddenly with reflected lights resembled an
oval patch of night sky flung down into the hopeless and abysmal night
of the wilderness. The white man had some supper out of the basket,
then collecting a few sticks that lay about the platform, made up a
small fire, not for warmth, but for the sake of the smoke, which would
keep off the mosquitos. He wrapped himself in the blankets and sat
with his back against the reed wall of the house, smoking
thoughtfully.
Tales of Unrest |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: assure you I tremble in the springtime, for 'tis perfect murder.'
'You don't say so, Mrs. Smith!'
'John digs round the roots, you know. In goes his blundering
spade, through roots, bulbs, everything that hasn't got a good
show above ground, turning 'em up cut all to slices. Only the
very last fall I went to move some tulips, when I found every bulb
upside down, and the stems crooked round. He had turned 'em over
in the spring, and the cunning creatures had soon found that
heaven was not where it used to be.'
'What's that long-favoured flower under the hedge?'
'They? O Lord, they are the horrid Jacob's ladders! Instead of
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
