| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: course of action will be most expedient; for there is a difference between
justice and expediency. Many persons have done great wrong and profited by
their injustice; others have done rightly and come to no good.
SOCRATES: Well, but granting that the just and the expedient are ever so
much opposed, you surely do not imagine that you know what is expedient for
mankind, or why a thing is expedient?
ALCIBIADES: Why not, Socrates?--But I am not going to be asked again from
whom I learned, or when I made the discovery.
SOCRATES: What a way you have! When you make a mistake which might be
refuted by a previous argument, you insist on having a new and different
refutation; the old argument is a worn-our garment which you will no longer
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Koran: shouldst be smooth with them, then would they be smooth with thee!
And obey not any mean swearer, a back-biter, a walker about with
slander; a forbidder of good, a transgressor, a sinner; rude, and
base-born too; though he have wealth and sons!
When our signs are recited to him he says, 'Old folks' tales!'
We will brand him on the snout!
Verily, we have tried them as we tried the fellows of the garden
when they swore, 'We will cut its fruit at morn!'
But they made not the exception; and there came round about it an
encompassing calamity from thy Lord the while they slept; and on the
morrow it was as one the fruit of which is cut.
The Koran |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: far from being surprised at my misery, you will only wonder that
I survive what I have endured. I will confide this tale of misery
and terror to you the day after our marriage shall take place,
for, my sweet cousin, there must be perfect confidence between us.
But until then, I conjure you, do not mention or allude to it.
This I most earnestly entreat, and I know you will comply."
In about a week after the arrival of Elizabeth's letter we
returned to Geneva. The sweet girl welcomed me with warm affection,
yet tears were in her eyes as she beheld my emaciated frame and
feverish cheeks. I saw a change in her also. She was thinner
and had lost much of that heavenly vivacity that had before charmed me;
Frankenstein |
