| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: usefulness in this. What a difficulty there is to obtain admission
to the curious library of old Samuel Pepys, the well-known diarist.
There it is at Magdalene College, Cambridge, in the identical book-cases
provided for the books by Pepys himself; but no one can gain admission
except in company of two Fellows of the College, and if a single book
be lost, the whole library goes away to a neighbouring college.
However willing and anxious to oblige, it is evident that no one
can use the library at the expense of the time, if not temper,
of two Fellows. Some similar restrictions are in force at
the Teylerian Museum, Haarlem, where a lifelong imprisonment is
inflicted upon its many treasures.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: assumption is right or wrong may hereafter be investigated. Admitting the
existence of it, will you tell me how such a science enables us to
distinguish what we know or do not know, which, as we were saying, is
self-knowledge or wisdom: so we were saying?
Yes, Socrates, he said; and that I think is certainly true: for he who has
this science or knowledge which knows itself will become like the knowledge
which he has, in the same way that he who has swiftness will be swift, and
he who has beauty will be beautiful, and he who has knowledge will know.
In the same way he who has that knowledge which is self-knowing, will know
himself.
I do not doubt, I said, that a man will know himself, when he possesses
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: "You may speak," said the Captain. "This man does not understand French."
I gave a last look at the wounded man.
"He will be dead in two hours."
"Can nothing save him?"
"Nothing."
Captain Nemo's hand contracted, and some tears glistened in his eyes,
which I thought incapable of shedding any.
For some moments I still watched the dying man, whose life ebbed slowly.
His pallor increased under the electric light that was shed over
his death-bed. I looked at his intelligent forehead, furrowed with
premature wrinkles, produced probably by misfortune and sorrow.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
