| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: reasons which Plato has put into his mouth. And there would be no
difficulty in arguing that Socrates should have lived and preferred to a
glorious death the good which he might still be able to perform. 'A
rhetorician would have had much to say upon that point.' It may be
observed however that Plato never intended to answer the question of
casuistry, but only to exhibit the ideal of patient virtue which refuses to
do the least evil in order to avoid the greatest, and to show his master
maintaining in death the opinions which he had professed in his life. Not
'the world,' but the 'one wise man,' is still the paradox of Socrates in
his last hours. He must be guided by reason, although her conclusions may
be fatal to him. The remarkable sentiment that the wicked can do neither
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: the floating batteries of the Emperor Napoleon III in the Crimean
war and lasted, with an enormous expenditure of human energy and
resources, for seventy years. In that space of time the world
produced over twelve thousand five hundred of these strange
monsters, in schools, in types, in series, each larger and
heavier and more deadly than its predecessors. Each in its turn
was hailed as the last birth of time, most in their turn were
sold for old iron. Only about five per cent of them ever fought
in a battle. Some foundered, some went ashore, and broke up,
several rammed one another by accident and sank. The lives of
countless men were spent in their service, the splendid genius,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: quite within the range of possibility.
It was the commander of a Chinese man-of-war who received a
copy of the edict of 1972 from the hand of my illustrious
ancestor, Admiral Turck, on one hundred seventy-five, two
hundred and six years ago, and from the yellowed pages of
the admiral's diary I learned that the fate of the
Philippines was even then presaged by these Chinese naval
officers.
Yes, for over two hundred years no man crossed 30d to 175d
and lived to tell his story--not until chance drew me across
and back again, and public opinion, revolting at last
Lost Continent |
