| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: separating it from the radiant orb is then increased in round
numbers to 400,000 miles, and the heat which she receives must
be a little less."
"Very well said!" exclaimed Barbicane. "Do you know, Michel,
that, for an amateur, you are intelligent."
"Yes," replied Michel coolly, "we are all so on the Boulevard
des Italiens."
Barbicane gravely grasped the hand of his amiable companion, and
continued to enumerate the advantages reserved for the inhabitants
of the visible face.
Among others, he mentioned eclipses of the sun, which only take
From the Earth to the Moon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: And after that they had gone a league from the city, the young
Fisherman frowned, and flung the cup away, and said to his Soul,
'Why didst thou tell me to take this cup and hide it, for it was an
evil thing to do?'
But his Soul answered him, 'Be at peace, be at peace.'
And on the evening of the second day they came to a city, and the
young Fisherman said to his Soul, 'Is this the city in which she
dances of whom thou didst speak to me?'
And his Soul answered him, 'It is not this city, but another.
Nevertheless let us enter in.' So they entered in and passed
through the streets, and as they passed through the Street of the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: might then have been regarded as being the expression of ideas. But this
higher and truer point of view never appears to have occurred to Plato.
Nor has he any distinction between the fine arts and the mechanical; and,
neither here nor anywhere, an adequate conception of the beautiful in
external things.
7. Plato agrees partially with certain 'surly or fastidious' philosophers,
as he terms them, who defined pleasure to be the absence of pain. They are
also described as eminent in physics. There is unfortunately no school of
Greek philosophy known to us which combined these two characteristics.
Antisthenes, who was an enemy of pleasure, was not a physical philosopher;
the atomists, who were physical philosophers, were not enemies of pleasure.
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