| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: good should be perfect and sufficient. But is the life of pleasure perfect
and sufficient, when deprived of memory, consciousness, anticipation? Is
not this the life of an oyster? Or is the life of mind sufficient, if
devoid of any particle of pleasure? Must not the union of the two be
higher and more eligible than either separately? And is not the element
which makes this mixed life eligible more akin to mind than to pleasure?
Thus pleasure is rejected and mind is rejected. And yet there may be a
life of mind, not human but divine, which conquers still.
But, if we are to pursue this argument further, we shall require some new
weapons; and by this, I mean a new classification of existence. (1) There
is a finite element of existence, and (2) an infinite, and (3) the union of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Talisman by Walter Scott: Such is the simple and primitive structure--a shepherd and his
flock. All this internal chain of feudal dependance is
artificial and sophisticated; and I would rather hold the baton
of my poor marquisate with a firm gripe, and wield it after my
pleasure, than the sceptre of a monarch, to be in effect
restrained and curbed by the will of as many proud feudal barons
as hold land under the Assizes of Jerusalem. [The Assises de
Jerusalem were the digest of feudal law, composed by Godfrey of
Boulogne, for the government of the Latin kingdom of Palestine,
when reconquered from the Saracens. "It was composed with advice
of the patriarch and barons, the clergy and laity, and is," says
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: "for a husband or wife to tell a third person that they are unhappy
in their marriage? If a marriage ceremony is a religious thing,
it is possibly wrong; but if it is only a sordid contract,
based on material convenience in householding, rating, and taxing,
and the inheritance of land and money by children, making it
necessary that the male parent should be known--which it seems to be--
why surely a person may say, even proclaim upon the housetops, that it
hurts and grieves him or her?"
"I have said so, anyhow, to you."
Presently she went on: "Are there many couples, do you think,
where one dislikes the other for no definite fault?"
Jude the Obscure |
