The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: the cost of base fear, and angry suspicion, between nations which
have not grace nor honesty enough in all their multitudes to buy an
hour's peace of mind with; as, at present, France and England,
purchasing of each other ten millions sterling worth of
consternation, annually (a remarkably light crop, half thorns and
half aspen leaves, sown, reaped, and granaried by the 'science' of
the modern political economist, teaching covetousness instead of
truth). And, all unjust war being supportable, if not by pillage of
the enemy, only by loans from capitalists, these loans are repaid by
subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to have no will in the
matter, the capitalists' will being the primary root of the war; but
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: determined by the great metaphysician. But even if knowledge can know
itself, how does the knowledge of what we know imply the knowledge of what
we do not know? Besides, knowledge is an abstraction only, and will not
inform us of any particular subject, such as medicine, building, and the
like. It may tell us that we or other men know something, but can never
tell us what we know.
Admitting that there is a knowledge of what we know and of what we do not
know, which would supply a rule and measure of all things, still there
would be no good in this; and the knowledge which temperance gives must be
of a kind which will do us good; for temperance is a good. But this
universal knowledge does not tend to our happiness and good: the only kind
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: My bedding lay upon a rug stretched directly upon
the warm sand. The noise appeared to be coming from
beneath the rug. I raised it, but found nothing--yet,
at intervals, the sound continued.
I dug into the sand with the point of my hunting-
knife. A few inches below the surface of the sand
I encountered a solid substance that had the feel of
wood beneath the sharp steel.
Excavating about it, I unearthed a small wooden box.
From this receptacle issued the strange sound that I
had heard.
Pellucidar |