| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: illustrious beginning the fortunes of the race must have declined;
and Tenkoruti, the grandfather of Tembinok', was the chief of a
village at the north end of the island. Kuria and Aranuka were yet
independent; Apemama itself the arena of devastating feuds.
Through this perturbed period of history the figure of Tenkoruti
stalks memorable. In war he was swift and bloody; several towns
fell to his spear, and the inhabitants were butchered to a man. In
civil life this arrogance was unheard of. When the council of Old
Men was summoned, he went to the Speak House, delivered his mind,
and left without waiting to be answered. Wisdom had spoken: let
others opine according to their folly. He was feared and hated,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: made Francesca at this moment the most fascinating creature in the
world. The dinner and the evening were full of cheerfulness,
justified, indeed, by the relief of the two refugees, but depressing
to Rodolphe.
"Can she be fickle?" he asked himself as he returned to the Stopfers'
house. "She sympathized in my sorrow, and I cannot take part in her
joy!"
He blamed himself, justifying this girl-wife.
"She has no taint of hypocrisy, and is carried away by impulse,"
thought he, "and I want her to be like a Parisian woman."
Next day and the following days, in fact, for twenty days after,
Albert Savarus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: first confined between high and narrow banks, but finally spreading over
the continent of Europe. It is and is not the same with ancient
philosophy. There is a great deal in modern philosophy which is inspired
by ancient. There is much in ancient philosophy which was 'born out of due
time; and before men were capable of understanding it. To the fathers of
modern philosophy, their own thoughts appeared to be new and original, but
they carried with them an echo or shadow of the past, coming back by
recollection from an elder world. Of this the enquirers of the seventeenth
century, who to themselves appeared to be working out independently the
enquiry into all truth, were unconscious. They stood in a new relation to
theology and natural philosophy, and for a time maintained towards both an
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