| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: length that this was the best use it could put me to, and
had never thought to avail itself of my services in some
way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me
and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to
climb or break through before they could get to be as free
as I was. I did nor for a moment feel confined, and the
walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as
if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly
did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who
are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment
there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: distant or near by -- it seemed both. Its recurrence was
regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He
awaited each new stroke with impatience and -- he knew not
why -- apprehension. The intervals of silence grew
progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With
their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength
and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the trust of a knife;
he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of
his watch.
He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If
I could free my hands," he thought, "I might throw off the
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: logical exercises of the age in which he lived; and while indulging his
dialectical fancy, and making a contribution to logical method, he delights
also to transfix the Eristic Sophist with weapons borrowed from his own
armoury. As we have already seen, the division gives him the opportunity
of making the most damaging reflections on the Sophist and all his kith and
kin, and to exhibit him in the most discreditable light.
Nor need we seriously consider whether Plato was right in assuming that an
animal so various could not be confined within the limits of a single
definition. In the infancy of logic, men sought only to obtain a
definition of an unknown or uncertain term; the after reflection scarcely
occurred to them that the word might have several senses, which shaded off
|
