| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: by means of pale, cold, grey conceptional networks which they
threw over the motley whirl of the senses--the mob of the senses,
as Plato said. In this overcoming of the world, and interpreting
of the world in the manner of Plato, there was an ENJOYMENT
different from that which the physicists of today offer us--and
likewise the Darwinists and anti-teleologists among the
physiological workers, with their principle of the "smallest
possible effort," and the greatest possible blunder. "Where there
is nothing more to see or to grasp, there is also nothing more
for men to do"--that is certainly an imperative different from
the Platonic one, but it may notwithstanding be the right
Beyond Good and Evil |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: had passed through the Isthmus of Suez.
CHAPTER VI
THE GRECIAN ARCHIPELAGO
The next day, the 12th of February, at the dawn of day,
the Nautilus rose to the surface. I hastened on to the platform.
Three miles to the south the dim outline of Pelusium was to be seen.
A torrent had carried us from one sea to another.
About seven o'clock Ned and Conseil joined me.
"Well, Sir Naturalist," said the Canadian, in a slightly jovial tone,
"and the Mediterranean?"
"We are floating on its surface, friend Ned."
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: poured in upon the inhabitants of peaceful commerce as vultures
descend upon domestic fowl. Their celerity and fierceness made the
wall necessary, and their ignorance made it efficacious.
"But for the Pyramids, no reason has ever been given adequate to
the cost and labour of the work. The narrowness of the chambers
proves that it could afford no retreat from enemies, and treasures
might have been reposited at far less expense with equal security.
It seems to have been erected only in compliance with that hunger
of imagination which preys incessantly upon life, and must be
always appeased by some employment. Those who have already all
that they can enjoy must enlarge their desires. He that has built
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