| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: the primeval sources of thought and belief, do we suppose that the mere
accident of our being the heirs of the Greek philosophers can give us a
right to set ourselves up as having the true and only standard of reason in
the world? Or when we contemplate the infinite worlds in the expanse of
heaven can we imagine that a few meagre categories derived from language
and invented by the genius of one or two great thinkers contain the secret
of the universe? Or, having regard to the ages during which the human race
may yet endure, do we suppose that we can anticipate the proportions human
knowledge may attain even within the short space of one or two thousand
years?
Again, we have a difficulty in understanding how ideas can be causes, which
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: and came down to New York and unloaded several tons at 26
Broadway; he did the same thing in the case of the copper strike
in Michigan, and again in the case of "The Jungle"--and all this
without the slightest claim to divine inspiration or authority!
Mr. Abbott answers another question: "We certainly did not return
the amount to the railroad company." Well, a sturdy conscience
must be a comfort to its possessor. The President of the
"Outlook" is in the position of a pawnbroker caught with stolen
goods in his establishment. He had no idea they were stolen; and
we might believe it, if the thief were obscure. But when the
thief is the most notorious in the city--when his picture has
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: saw anything wrong with it.
"I guess, perhaps, very early marriage may account for a good
deal of the divorce," said he, reflectively.
Whereat I was silent. Their marriages and their divorces only
concern these people; and neither I travelling, nor you, who may
come after, have any right to make rude remarks about them.
Only--only coming from a land where a man begins to lightly turn
to thoughts of love not before he is thirty, I own that playing
at house-keeping before that age rather surprised me. Out in the
West, though, they marry, boys and girls, from sixteen upward,
and I have met more than one bride of fifteen--husband aged
|
