| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: these has an idea distinct from the actual objects with which we come into
contact, or not?
Certainly not, said Socrates; visible things like these are such as they
appear to us, and I am afraid that there would be an absurdity in assuming
any idea of them, although I sometimes get disturbed, and begin to think
that there is nothing without an idea; but then again, when I have taken up
this position, I run away, because I am afraid that I may fall into a
bottomless pit of nonsense, and perish; and so I return to the ideas of
which I was just now speaking, and occupy myself with them.
Yes, Socrates, said Parmenides; that is because you are still young; the
time will come, if I am not mistaken, when philosophy will have a firmer
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: all who try to touch it. La Sauvage grew impatient. She grasped him,
set him in the armchair, and held him down with herculean strength.
"Go on, child; sew him in his shroud," she said, turning to Mme.
Cantinet.
As soon as this operation was completed, La Sauvage set Schmucke back
in his place at the foot of the bed.
"Do you understand?" said she. "The poor dead man lying there must be
done up, there is no help for it."
Schmucke began to cry. The women left him and took possession of the
kitchen, whither they brought all the necessaries in a very short
time. La Sauvage made out a preliminary statement accounting for three
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle: although the sun was only then just sinking in the western sky.
There were but three bedrooms in the place, and to the meanest
of these the landlord showed Robin Hood, but little Robin cared
for the looks of the place, for he could have slept that night
upon a bed of broken stones. So, stripping off his clothes
without more ado, he rolled into the bed and was asleep almost
ere his head touched the pillow.
Not long after Robin had so gone to his rest a great cloud peeped
blackly over the hills to the westward. Higher and higher it arose
until it piled up into the night like a mountain of darkness.
All around beneath it came ever and anon a dull red flash,
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |
