| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: himself, over and over again, 'the woman could not be deceived herself--if
she could,--what weakness!'--tormenting word!--which led his imagination a
thorny dance, and, before all was over, play'd the duce and all with him;--
for sure as ever the word weakness was uttered, and struck full upon his
brain--so sure it set him upon running divisions upon how many kinds of
weaknesses there were;--that there was such a thing as weakness of the
body,--as well as weakness of the mind,--and then he would do nothing but
syllogize within himself for a stage or two together, How far the cause of
all these vexations might, or might not, have arisen out of himself.
In short, he had so many little subjects of disquietude springing out of
this one affair, all fretting successively in his mind as they rose up in
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: And rival monarchs felt his yoke;
Captains of ships to gold are slaves,
Tho' fierce as their own winds and waves. FRANCIS.
The close of this passage, by which every reader is
now disappointed and offended, was probably the
delight of the Roman Court: it cannot be imagined,
that Horace, after having given to gold the force of
thunder, and told of its power to storm cities and to
conquer kings, would have concluded his account of
its efficacy with its influence over naval commanders,
had he not alluded to some fact then current in the
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: knowledge, the unity of God and law. The difference between the will and
the affections and between the reason and the passions should also be
recognized by it.
Its sphere is supposed to be narrowed to the individual soul; but it cannot
be thus separated in fact. It goes back to the beginnings of things, to
the first growth of language and philosophy, and to the whole science of
man. There can be no truth or completeness in any study of the mind which
is confined to the individual. The nature of language, though not the
whole, is perhaps at present the most important element in our knowledge of
it. It is not impossible that some numerical laws may be found to have a
place in the relations of mind and matter, as in the rest of nature. The
|
