| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: neither is there any mind anywhere, or about anything or belonging to any
one.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: And yet this equally follows, if we grant that all things are in
motion--upon this view too mind has no existence.
THEAETETUS: How so?
STRANGER: Do you think that sameness of condition and mode and subject
could ever exist without a principle of rest?
THEAETETUS: Certainly not.
STRANGER: Can you see how without them mind could exist, or come into
existence anywhere?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: took complete possession of me. What strange developments of
humanity, what wonderful advances upon our rudimentary
civilization, I thought, might not appear when I came to look
nearly into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated
before my eyes! I saw great and splendid architecture rising
about me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and
yet, as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist. I saw a richer
green flow up the hill-side, and remain there, without any wintry
intermission. Even through the veil of my confusion the earth
seemed very fair. And so my mind came round to the business of
stopping,
The Time Machine |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather
than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather
than let it perish. And the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed
generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it.
These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew
that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen,
perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the
insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed
no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration
Second Inaugural Address |
