| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Richard III by William Shakespeare: Too late he died that might have kept that title,
Which by his death hath lost much majesty.
GLOUCESTER. How fares our cousin, noble Lord of York?
YORK. I thank you, gentle uncle. O, my lord,
You said that idle weeds are fast in growth.
The Prince my brother hath outgrown me far.
GLOUCESTER. He hath, my lord.
YORK. And therefore is he idle?
GLOUCESTER. O, my fair cousin, I must not say so.
YORK. Then he is more beholding to you than I.
GLOUCESTER. He may command me as my sovereign;
Richard III |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: seem to float on silvery patches of calm water, arid and gray,
or dark green and rounded like clumps of evergreen bushes,
with the larger ones, a mile or two long, showing the outlines
of ridges, ribs of gray rock under the dark mantle of matted leafage.
Unknown to trade, to travel, almost to geography, the manner
of life they harbor is an unsolved secret. There must be villages--
settlements of fishermen at least--on the largest of them, and some
communication with the world is probably kept up by native craft.
But all that forenoon, as we headed for them, fanned along by
the faintest of breezes, I saw no sign of man or canoe in the field
of the telescope I kept on pointing at the scattered group.
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: nurture and education. But this is the real question. We cannot pursue
the mind into embryology: we can only trace how, after birth, it begins to
grow. But how much is due to the soil, how much to the original latent
seed, it is impossible to distinguish. And because we are certain that
heredity exercises a considerable, but undefined influence, we must not
increase the wonder by exaggerating it.
k. The love of system is always tending to prevail over the historical
investigation of the mind, which is our chief means of knowing it. It
equally tends to hinder the other great source of our knowledge of the
mind, the observation of its workings and processes which we can make for
ourselves.
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