| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: occasion. I will therefore remind you of what you were saying: were you
not saying that Achilles was a true man, and Odysseus false and wily?
HIPPIAS: I was.
SOCRATES: And now do you perceive that the same person has turned out to
be false as well as true? If Odysseus is false he is also true, and if
Achilles is true he is also false, and so the two men are not opposed to
one another, but they are alike.
HIPPIAS: O Socrates, you are always weaving the meshes of an argument,
selecting the most difficult point, and fastening upon details instead of
grappling with the matter in hand as a whole. Come now, and I will
demonstrate to you, if you will allow me, by many satisfactory proofs, that
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: stricken by the revelations that were thus made. What were they?
Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad
angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet
only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but a
lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet
letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's?
Or, must she receive those intimations -- so obscure, yet so
distinct -- as truth? In all her miserable experience, there was
nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense. It
perplexed, as well as shocked her, by the irreverent
The Scarlet Letter |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: used this staircase, as being nearer the path to the lodge When--
Mr. Innes called and then rushed at me, I--I was alarmed, and
flung the blanket at him."
Halsey was examining the cut on his forehead in a small mirror on
the wall. It was not much of an injury, but it had bled freely,
and his appearance was rather terrifying.
"Thomas ill?" he said, over his shoulder. "Why, _I_ thought I
saw Thomas out there as you made that cyclonic break out of the
door and over the porch."
I could see that under pretense of examining his injury he was
watching her through the mirror.
The Circular Staircase |
