| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: To deal fitly with a letter so extraordinary, I must draw at the
outset on my private knowledge of the signatory and his sect. It
may offend others; scarcely you, who have been so busy to collect,
so bold to publish, gossip on your rivals. And this is perhaps the
moment when I may best explain to you the character of what you are
to read: I conceive you as a man quite beyond and below the
reticences of civility: with what measure you mete, with that shall
it be measured you again; with you, at last, I rejoice to feel the
button off the foil and to plunge home. And if in aught that I
shall say I should offend others, your colleagues, whom I respect
and remember with affection, I can but offer them my regret; I am
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: Jim--Jim who looked at me--so--with his deep eyes--and I. . . ."
Joe lifted her as if she were a baby, and carrying her down to the raft,
gently laid her by her sleeping sister.
The innocent words which he should not have heard were like a blow. What she
would never have acknowledged in her waking hours had been revealed in her
dreams. He recalled the glance of Jim's eyes as it had rested on Nell many
times that day, and now these things were most significant.
He found at the end of the island a great, mossy stone. On this he climbed,
and sat where the moonlight streamed upon him. Gradually that cold bitterness
died out from his face, as it passed from his heart, and once more he became
engrossed in the silver sheen on the water, the lapping of the waves on the
The Spirit of the Border |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: method' of proceeding by regular divisions, which is described in the
Phaedrus and Philebus, and of which examples are given in the Politicus and
in the Sophist. It is expressly spoken of as the method which Socrates had
heard Zeno practise in the days of his youth (compare Soph.).
The discussion of Socrates with Parmenides is one of the most remarkable
passages in Plato. Few writers have ever been able to anticipate 'the
criticism of the morrow' on their favourite notions. But Plato may here be
said to anticipate the judgment not only of the morrow, but of all after-
ages on the Platonic Ideas. For in some points he touches questions which
have not yet received their solution in modern philosophy.
The first difficulty which Parmenides raises respecting the Platonic ideas
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