| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: is beside himself when he is performing;--his eyes rain tears and his hair
stands on end. Socrates is of opinion that a man must be mad who behaves
in this way at a festival when he is surrounded by his friends and there is
nothing to trouble him. Ion is confident that Socrates would never think
him mad if he could only hear his embellishments of Homer. Socrates asks
whether he can speak well about everything in Homer. 'Yes, indeed he can.'
'What about things of which he has no knowledge?' Ion answers that he can
interpret anything in Homer. But, rejoins Socrates, when Homer speaks of
the arts, as for example, of chariot-driving, or of medicine, or of
prophecy, or of navigation--will he, or will the charioteer or physician or
prophet or pilot be the better judge? Ion is compelled to admit that every
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: But surely you've heard? No? Why? He bought
all the patent rights and made a big company. In
those days there were grosses of grosses of separate
businesses and business companies. Grosses of
grosses! His roads killed the railroads--the old
things--in two dozen years; he bought up and Eadhaillited'
the tracks. And because he didn't want to
break up his great property or let in shareholders, he
left it all to the Sleeper, and put it under a Board of
Trustees that he had picked and trained. He knew
then the Sleeper wouldn't wake, that he would go on
When the Sleeper Wakes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: One spot alone refused to freeze; this was the pool immediately
below the central cavern, the receptacle for the stream
of burning lava. It was entirely enclosed by rocks,
and if ever a few icicles were formed there by the action
of the cold, they were very soon melted by the fiery shower.
Hissing and spluttering as the hot lava came in contact with it,
the water was in a continual state of ebullition, and the fish
that abounded in its depths defied the angler's craft; they were,
as Ben Zoof remarked, "too much boiled to bite."
At the beginning of April the weather changed. The sky became overcast,
but there was no rise in the temperature. Unlike the polar winters
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