| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: So, as in darkness, from the magic lamp,
The momentary pictures gleam and fade
And perish, and the night resurges - these
Shall I remember, and then all forget.
Apemama.
XXXV
THE tropics vanish, and meseems that I,
From Halkerside, from topmost Allermuir,
Or steep Caerketton, dreaming gaze again.
Far set in fields and woods, the town I see
Spring gallant from the shallows of her smoke,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: knowledge is happy, for these live according to knowledge, and yet they are
not allowed by you to be happy; but I think that you mean to confine
happiness to particular individuals who live according to knowledge, such
for example as the prophet, who, as I was saying, knows the future. Is it
of him you are speaking or of some one else?
Yes, I mean him, but there are others as well.
Yes, I said, some one who knows the past and present as well as the future,
and is ignorant of nothing. Let us suppose that there is such a person,
and if there is, you will allow that he is the most knowing of all living
men.
Certainly he is.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Adventure by Jack London: grass-covered, and with only occasional trees. There was a wild
chorus of warning cries from the women, who scurried out of the
grass houses, and like frightened quail dived over the opposite
edge of the clearing, gathering up their babies and children as
they ran. At the same time spears and arrows began to fall among
the invaders. At Sheldon's command, the Tahitians and Poonga-
Poonga men got into action with their rifles. The spears and
arrows ceased, the last bushman disappeared, and the fight was over
almost as soon as it had begun. On their own side no one had been
hurt, while half a dozen bushmen had been killed. These alone
remained, the wounded having been carried off. The Tahitians and
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