| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of War by Sun Tzu: march, do not advance to meet it in mid-stream. It will be best
to let half the army get across, and then deliver your attack.
[Li Ch`uan alludes to the great victory won by Han Hsin over
Lung Chu at the Wei River. Turning to the CH`IEN HAN SHU, ch.
34, fol. 6 verso, we find the battle described as follows: "The
two armies were drawn up on opposite sides of the river. In the
night, Han Hsin ordered his men to take some ten thousand sacks
filled with sand and construct a dam higher up. Then, leading
half his army across, he attacked Lung Chu; but after a time,
pretending to have failed in his attempt, he hastily withdrew to
the other bank. Lung Chu was much elated by this unlooked-for
The Art of War |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: joined to one another and making a white stripe three and one-
half feet long; the thirteen blue squares of William II. will be
joined to that--a blue stripe two feet, two inches long, followed
by Henry's red stripe five feet, ten inches long, and so on. The
colored divisions will smartly show to the eye the difference in
the length of the reigns and impress the proportions on the
memory and the understanding. (Fig. 7.)
Stephen of Blois comes next. He requires nineteen two-inch
squares of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 8.)
That is a steer. The sound suggests the beginning of
Stephen's name. I choose it for that reason. I can make a
What is Man? |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: pursuing a definite object.
"The first thing that I did was to take off my boots, and now,
having only stockings on, I advanced toward the wall, over the
sofa, where firearms and daggers were hanging, and I took down a
curved Damascus blade, which I had never used, and which was very
sharp. I took it from its sheath. I remember that the sheath
fell upon the sofa, and that I said to myself: 'I must look for
it later; it must not be lost.'
"Then I took off my overcoat, which I had kept on all the time,
and with wolf-like tread started for THE ROOM. I do not remember
how I proceeded, whether I ran or went slowly, through what
The Kreutzer Sonata |
