| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: Are you not ashamed, Socrates, of asking a question when you are asked one?
Well, I said; but then what am I to do? for I will do whatever you bid;
when I do not know what you are asking, you tell me to answer nevertheless,
and not to ask again.
Why, you surely have some notion of my meaning, he said.
Yes, I replied.
Well, then, answer according to your notion of my meaning.
Yes, I said; but if the question which you ask in one sense is understood
and answered by me in another, will that please you--if I answer what is
not to the point?
That will please me very well; but will not please you equally well, as I
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: brother, who had served in the Guards and dying early left hosts
of friends and a loved memory in the great world of St.
Petersburg, some influential personages procured for her this
permission--it was officially called the "Highest Grace"--of a
four months' leave from exile.
This is also the year in which I first begin to remember my
mother with more distinctness than a mere loving, wide-browed,
silent, protecting presence, whose eyes had a sort of commanding
sweetness; and I also remember the great gathering of all the
relations from near and far, and the gray heads of the family
friends paying her the homage of respect and love in the house of
A Personal Record |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: considering the low regard in which he is held,--and accords him his
proportionate share of attention, and no more.
In his thought, nature is not accessory to man. Worthy M. Perichon,
of prosaic, not to say philistinic fame, had, as we remember, his
travels immortalized in a painting where a colossal Perichon in
front almost completely eclipsed a tiny Mont Blanc behind. A Far
Oriental thinks poetry, which may possibly account for the fact that
in his mind-pictures the relative importance of man and mountain
stands reversed. "The matchless Fuji," first of motifs in his art,
admits no pilgrim as its peer.
Nor is it to woman that turn his thoughts. Mother Earth is fairer,
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