| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: venture to attribute to many of Plato's words in the Timaeus any more
meaning than to his mythical account of the heavens in the Republic and in
the Phaedrus. (Compare his denial of the 'blasphemous opinion' that there
are planets or wandering stars; all alike move in circles--Laws.) The
stars are the habitations of the souls of men, from which they come and to
which they return. In attributing to the fixed stars only the most perfect
motion--that which is on the same spot or circulating around the same--he
might perhaps have said that to 'the spectator of all time and all
existence,' to borrow once more his own grand expression, or viewed, in the
language of Spinoza, 'sub specie aeternitatis,' they were still at rest,
but appeared to move in order to teach men the periods of time. Although
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: oppidanis mittit; quorum adventu et Remis cum spe delensionis studium
propugnandi accessit et hostibus eadem de causa spes potiundi oppidi
discessit. Itaque paulisper apud oppidum morati agrosque Remorum
depopulati, omnibus vicis aedificiisque quo adire potuerant incensis, ad
castra Caesaris omnibus copiis contenderunt et a milibus passuum minus
duobus castra posuerunt; quae castra, ut fumo atque ignibus
significabatur, amplius milibus passuum VIII latitudinem patebant.
Caesar primo et propter multitudinem hostium et propter eximiam
opinionem virtutis proelio supersedere statuit; cotidie tamen equestribus
proeliis quid hostis virtute posset et quid nostri auderent
periclitabatur. Ubi nostros non esse inferiores intellexit, loco pro
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: discard their clothes. Here Umslopogaas had the advantage, for
he did not wear any to speak of, except a moocha.
Hotter it grew, and hotter yet, till at last we could scarcely
breathe, and the perspiration poured out of us. Half an hour
more, and though we were all now stark naked, we could hardly
bear it. The place was like an antechamber of the infernal regions
proper. I dipped my hand into the water and drew it out almost
with a cry; it was nearly boiling. We consulted a little thermometer
we had -- the mercury stood at 123 degrees. From the surface
of the water rose a dense cloud of steam. Alphonse groaned out
that we were already in purgatory, which indeed we were, though
Allan Quatermain |
