| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: and interest is for the sake of immortality.'
I was astonished at her words, and said: 'Is this really true, O thou wise
Diotima?' And she answered with all the authority of an accomplished
sophist: 'Of that, Socrates, you may be assured;--think only of the
ambition of men, and you will wonder at the senselessness of their ways,
unless you consider how they are stirred by the love of an immortality of
fame. They are ready to run all risks greater far than they would have run
for their children, and to spend money and undergo any sort of toil, and
even to die, for the sake of leaving behind them a name which shall be
eternal. Do you imagine that Alcestis would have died to save Admetus, or
Achilles to avenge Patroclus, or your own Codrus in order to preserve the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: Antonia's benefit," continued Desroches. "The ebony chests inlaid with
mother-of-pearl and gold wire, the Brussels carpets, a mediaeval
bedstead worth three thousand francs, a Boule clock, candelabra in the
four corners of the dining-room, silk curtains, on which Chinese
patience had wrought pictures of birds, and hangings over the doors,
worth more than the portress that opened them.
" 'And that is what /you/ ought to have, my pretty lady.--And that is
what I should like to offer you,' he would conclude. 'I am quite aware
that you scarcely care a bit about me; but, at my age, we cannot
expect too much. Judge how much I love you; I have lent you a thousand
francs. I must confess that, in all my born days, I have not lent
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft: and vaster loomed the tenebrous towers of the nighted castle above,
and Carter could see that it was well-nigh blasphemous in its
immensity. Well might its stones have been quarried by nameless
workmen in that horrible gulf rent out of the rock in the hill
pass north of Inquanok, for such was its size that a man on its
threshold stood even as air out on the steps of earth's loftiest
fortress. The pshent of unknown stars above the myriad domed turrets
glowed with a sallow, sickly flare, so that a kind of twilight
hung about the murky walls of slippery onyx. The pallid beacon
was now seen to be a single shining window high up in one of the
loftiest towers, and as the helpless army neared the top of the
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath |
