| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: assignats were reaching their lowest depreciation and gold was worth
far more than silver. The two young surgeons, about twenty years of
age at the most, yielded themselves up to the poesy of their situation
with all the enthusiasm of youth. Between Strasburg and Bonn they had
visited the Electorate and the banks of the Rhine as artists,
philosophers, and observers. When a man's destiny is scientific he is,
at their age, a being who is truly many-sided. Even in making love or
in travelling, an assistant-surgeon should be gathering up the
rudiments of his fortune or his coming fame.
The two young had therefore given themselves wholly to that deep
admiration which must affect all educated men on seeing the banks of
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: are connected. Yet we accept them as the best expression which we have of
the correlation of forces or objects. We see that the term 'law' is a mere
abstraction, under which laws of matter and of mind, the law of nature and
the law of the land are included, and some of these uses of the word are
confusing, because they introduce into one sphere of thought associations
which belong to another; for example, order or sequence is apt to be
confounded with external compulsion and the internal workings of the mind
with their material antecedents. Yet none of them can be dispensed with;
we can only be on our guard against the error or confusion which arises out
of them. Thus in the use of the word 'substance' we are far from supposing
that there is any mysterious substratum apart from the objects which we
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: that in this vast but unknown period every variety of language may have
been in process of formation and decay, many times over.
(Compare Plato, Laws):--
'ATHENIAN STRANGER: And what then is to be regarded as the origin of
government? Will not a man be able to judge best from a point of view in
which he may behold the progress of states and their transitions to good
and evil?
CLEINIAS: What do you mean?
ATHENIAN STRANGER: I mean that he might watch them from the point of view
of time, and observe the changes which take place in them during infinite
ages.
|
