| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: variations, by the use of which he could distinguish the accidental from
the essential. He could not isolate phenomena, and he was helpless against
the influence of any word which had an equivocal or double sense.
Yet without this crude use of analogy the ancient physical philosopher
would have stood still; he could not have made even 'one guess among many'
without comparison. The course of natural phenomena would have passed
unheeded before his eyes, like fair sights or musical sounds before the
eyes and ears of an animal. Even the fetichism of the savage is the
beginning of reasoning; the assumption of the most fanciful of causes
indicates a higher mental state than the absence of all enquiry about them.
The tendency to argue from the higher to the lower, from man to the world,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: garden, but went straight to the snow-white palace and to the
great vaulted chamber where was the statue. "Yes," said the old
man, "it is the youngest princess, sure enough."
The prince said nothing, but he dipped up some of the water in
his palm and dashed it upon the statue. "If you are the princess,
take your true shape again," said he. Before the words had left
his lips the statue became flesh and blood, and the princess
stepped down from where she stood, and the prince thought that he
had never seen any one so beautiful as she. "You have brought me
back to life," said she, "and whatever I shall have shall be
yours as well as mine."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: `I know they're talking nonsense,' Alice thought to herself:
`and it's foolish to cry about it.' So she brushed away her
tears, and went on as cheerfully as she could. `At any rate I'd
better be getting out of the wood, for really it's coming on very
dark. Do you think it's going to rain?'
Tweedledum spread a large umbrella over himself and his
brother, and looked up into it. `No, I don't think it is,' he
said: `at least--not under HERE. Nohow.'
`But it may rain OUTSIDE?'
`It may--if it chooses,' said Tweedledee: `we've no
objection. Contrariwise.'
Through the Looking-Glass |
