| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: But if he lives pleasantly to the end of his life, will he not in that case
have lived well?
He will.
Then to live pleasantly is a good, and to live unpleasantly an evil?
Yes, he said, if the pleasure be good and honourable.
And do you, Protagoras, like the rest of the world, call some pleasant
things evil and some painful things good?--for I am rather disposed to say
that things are good in as far as they are pleasant, if they have no
consequences of another sort, and in as far as they are painful they are
bad.
I do not know, Socrates, he said, whether I can venture to assert in that
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: woods at the foot of the hill. We pushed through these
towards the railway without meeting a soul. The woods
across the line were but the scarred and blackened ruins of
woods; for the most part the trees had fallen, but a certain
proportion still stood, dismal grey stems, with dark brown
foliage instead of green.
On our side the fire had done no more than scorch the
nearer trees; it had failed to secure its footing. In one place
the woodmen had been at work on Saturday; trees, felled
and freshly trimmed, lay in a clearing, with heaps of sawdust
by the sawing-machine and its engine. Hard by was a tem-
War of the Worlds |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: overtaken her on her last cab drive. In the gas-light of the low-
fronted shops her big cheeks glowed with an orange hue under a
black and mauve bonnet.
Mrs Verloc's mother's complexion had become yellow by the effect of
age and from a natural predisposition to biliousness, favoured by
the trials of a difficult and worried existence, first as wife,
then as widow. It was a complexion, that under the influence of a
blush would take on an orange tint. And this woman, modest indeed
but hardened in the fires of adversity, of an age, moreover, when
blushes are not expected, had positively blushed before her
daughter. In the privacy of a four-wheeler, on her way to a
The Secret Agent |
