| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied,
if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments.
It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision
in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all
the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will
endure forever--it being impossible to destroy it except by some action
not provided for in the instrument itself.
Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an association
of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract,
be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it?
One party to a contract may violate it--break it, so to speak;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: to injure than to benefit the possessor, unless he had also the knowledge
of the best?
ALCIBIADES: I do now, if I did not before, Socrates.
SOCRATES: The state or the soul, therefore, which wishes to have a right
existence must hold firmly to this knowledge, just as the sick man clings
to the physician, or the passenger depends for safety on the pilot. And if
the soul does not set sail until she have obtained this she will be all the
safer in the voyage through life. But when she rushes in pursuit of wealth
or bodily strength or anything else, not having the knowledge of the best,
so much the more is she likely to meet with misfortune. And he who has the
love of learning (Or, reading polumatheian, 'abundant learning.'), and is
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: of the boat. "What d'ye mean, ye villains? D'ye mean to stave a
hole in us?"
"Why," said the man who had pushed it, "you saw 'twasn't done a
purpose, didn't you?"
"Well, you try it again, and somebody'll get hurt," said the man
in the boat, showing the butt end of his pistol.
The men on the wharf began laughing. Just then the boatswain
came down from the settlement again, and out along the landing.
The threatened turbulence quieted as he approached, and the crowd
moved sullenly aside to let him pass. He did not bring any pilot
with him, and he jumped down into the stern of the boat, saying,
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
