| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: that to a man who has any self-respect, nothing is more dishonourable than
to be honoured, not for his own sake, but on account of the reputation of
his ancestors. The honour of parents is a fair and noble treasure to their
posterity, but to have the use of a treasure of wealth and honour, and to
leave none to your successors, because you have neither money nor
reputation of your own, is alike base and dishonourable. And if you follow
our precepts you will be received by us as friends, when the hour of
destiny brings you hither; but if you neglect our words and are disgraced
in your lives, no one will welcome or receive you. This is the message
which is to be delivered to our children.
'Some of us have fathers and mothers still living, and we would urge them,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Young Forester by Zane Grey: hungry, and I feasted.
By this time the sun shone warm, and the canyon was delightful. I roamed
around, sat on sunny stones, and lay in the shade of pines. Deer browsed in
the glades. When they winded or saw me they would stand erect, shoot up
their long cars, and then leisurely lope away. Coyotes trotted out of
thickets and watched me suspiciously. I could have shot several, but deemed
it wise to be saving of my ammunition. Once I heard a low drumming. I could
not imagine what made it. Then a big blue grouse strutted out of a patch of
bushes. He spread his wings and tail and neck feathers, after the fashion
of a turkey-gobbler. It was a flap or shake of his wings that produced the
drumming. I wondered if he intended, by his actions, to frighten me away
The Young Forester |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: the subject with her, is more repulsive than her relations with her
deceased husband's brother.
Here, too, Shakespear betrays for once his religious sense by making
Hamlet, in his agony of shame, declare that his mother's conduct makes
"sweet religion a rhapsody of words." But for that passage we might
almost suppose that the feeling of Sunday morning in the country which
Orlando describes so perfectly in As You Like It was the beginning and
end of Shakespear's notion of religion. I say almost, because
Isabella in Measure for Measure has religious charm, in spite of the
conventional theatrical assumption that female religion means an
inhumanly ferocious chastity. But for the most part Shakespear
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