| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: SOCRATES: Well, but do you admit that the wiser is the better? Answer
'Yes' or 'No.'
CALLICLES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And ought not the better to have a larger share?
CALLICLES: Not of meats and drinks.
SOCRATES: I understand: then, perhaps, of coats--the skilfullest weaver
ought to have the largest coat, and the greatest number of them, and go
about clothed in the best and finest of them?
CALLICLES: Fudge about coats!
SOCRATES: Then the skilfullest and best in making shoes ought to have the
advantage in shoes; the shoemaker, clearly, should walk about in the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: red-hot iron. Then came the last scene of all; among some sixty
convicts in the prison yard of the Bicetre, he was awaiting his turn
to have the irons riveted on his limbs.
"Dear me! I cannot laugh any more! . . ." said Aquilina. "You are very
solemn, dear boy; what can be the matter? The gentleman has gone."
"A word with you, Castanier," said Melmoth when the piece was at an
end, and the attendant was fastening Mme. de la Garde's cloak.
The corridor was crowded, and escape impossible.
"Very well, what is it?"
"No human power can hinder you from taking Aquilina home, and going
next to Versailles, there to be arrested."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: alone, how much less should I dare to go bearing with me him who sat
in the cleft of the rock! Nay, here I must bide, so I went out of the
cave to the spring which flows from the rock on the right yonder and
washed my wounds and drank. Then I came back and sat in the mouth of
the cave, and watched the light die away from the face of the world.
While it was dying there was silence, but when it was dead the forest
awoke. A wind sprang up and tossed it till the green of its boughs
waved like troubled water on which the moon shines faintly. From the
heart of it, too, came howlings of ghosts and wolves, that were
answered by howls from the rocks above--hearken, Umslopogaas, such
howlings as we hear to-night!
Nada the Lily |
