| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: he got the elementary knowledge of what he presides over, most
generals are amateurs and improvisers.[30] I do not at all suppose
that you are one of that sort. I believe you could give as clear an
account of your schooling in strategy as you could in the matter of
wrestling. No doubt you have got at first hand many of your father's
"rules for generalship," which you carefully preserve, besides having
collected many others from every quarter whence it was possible to
pick up any knowledge which would be of use to a future general.
Again, I feel sure you are deeply concerned to escape even unconscious
ignorance of anything which will be serviceable to you in so high an
office; and if you detect in yourself any ignorance, you turn to those
The Memorabilia |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: me?
MENO: I should answer that bees do not differ from one another, as bees.
SOCRATES: And if I went on to say: That is what I desire to know, Meno;
tell me what is the quality in which they do not differ, but are all
alike;--would you be able to answer?
MENO: I should.
SOCRATES: And so of the virtues, however many and different they may be,
they have all a common nature which makes them virtues; and on this he who
would answer the question, 'What is virtue?' would do well to have his eye
fixed: Do you understand?
MENO: I am beginning to understand; but I do not as yet take hold of the
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