| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Symposium by Xenophon: marched to encounter the barbarian.[91] And still, at the sacred
festival to-day, it is agreed that no one among your ancestors has
ever been more fitted to discharge the priestly office than yourself;
yours a person the goodliest to behold in all our city, and a frame
adapted to undergo great toils.
[88] Cf. "Mem." III. vii.
[89] i.e. Demeter and Core. Callias (see "Hell." VI. l.c.) was
dadouchos (or torch-holder) in the mysteries.
[90] Or, "whose rites date back to Erechtheus." Cf. Plat. "Theag."
122.
[91] At Salamis. The tale is told by Herod. viii. 65, and Plut.
The Symposium |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: would be nothing to do, there would be no time to do
anything before they were upon us. The guns that
might have saved us are mislaid. Mislaid! Think of
the disorder of things! Think of this foolish tumult,
that cannot even find its weapons! Oh, for one
aeropile--just one! For the want of that I am beaten.
Humanity is beaten and our cause is lost! My
kingship, my headlong foolish kingship will not last a
night. And I have egged on the people to fight--."
"They would have fought anyhow."
"I doubt it. I have come among them--"
When the Sleeper Wakes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of War by Sun Tzu: than another after reading the maxims of Sun Tzu, it is that
their essence has been distilled from a large store of personal
observation and experience. They reflect the mind not only of a
born strategist, gifted with a rare faculty of generalization,
but also of a practical soldier closely acquainted with the
military conditions of his time. To say nothing of the fact that
these sayings have been accepted and endorsed by all the greatest
captains of Chinese history, they offer a combination of
freshness and sincerity, acuteness and common sense, which quite
excludes the idea that they were artificially concocted in the
study. If we admit, then, that the 13 chapters were the genuine
The Art of War |
