| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: thyself and me, demanding with ever increasing fervour that which fate
had not destined for thee. Forgive me and farewell! Let me call thee
brother! 'Tis a name that embraces many names. Receive, with a true
heart, the last fair token of the departing spirit --take this kiss.
Death unites all, Brackenburg--us too it will unite!
Brackenburg. Let me then die with thee! Share it! oh, share it! There is
enough to extinguish two lives.
Clara. Hold! Thou must live, thou canst live.--Support my Mother, who,
without thee, would be a prey to want. Be to her what I can no longer be,
live together, and weep for me. Weep for our fatherland, and for him who
could alone have upheld it. The present generation must still endure this
Egmont |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: who is able to penetrate the inner nature of man, and will not be panic-
struck by the vain pomp of tyranny? I will suppose that he is one who has
lived with him, and has seen him in family life, or perhaps in the hour of
trouble and danger.
Assuming that we ourselves are the impartial judge for whom we seek, let us
begin by comparing the individual and State, and ask first of all, whether
the State is likely to be free or enslaved--Will there not be a little
freedom and a great deal of slavery? And the freedom is of the bad, and
the slavery of the good; and this applies to the man as well as to the
State; for his soul is full of meanness and slavery, and the better part is
enslaved to the worse. He cannot do what he would, and his mind is full of
The Republic |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: and contract odious diseases among lewd females; and when their
fortunes are almost ruined, they marry some woman of mean birth,
disagreeable person, and unsound constitution (merely for the
sake of money), whom they hate and despise. That the productions
of such marriages are generally scrofulous, rickety, or deformed
children; by which means the family seldom continues above three
generations, unless the wife takes care to provide a healthy
father, among her neighbours or domestics, in order to improve
and continue the breed. That a weak diseased body, a meagre
countenance, and sallow complexion, are the true marks of noble
blood; and a healthy robust appearance is so disgraceful in a man
Gulliver's Travels |
