| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: philosophy. But as no one can determine the state of man in the world
before the Fall, 'the question must remain unanswered.' Similar questions
have occupied the minds of theologians in later ages; but they can hardly
be said to have found an answer. Professor Campbell well observes, that
the general spirit of the myth may be summed up in the words of the Lysis:
'If evil were to perish, should we hunger any more, or thirst any more, or
have any similar sensations? Yet perhaps the question what will or will
not be is a foolish one, for who can tell?' As in the Theaetetus, evil is
supposed to continue,--here, as the consequence of a former state of the
world, a sort of mephitic vapour exhaling from some ancient chaos,--there,
as involved in the possibility of good, and incident to the mixed state of
Statesman |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: close of the last century there were two Brahmans, out of
whose house a man had wrongfully, as they thought, taken forty
rupees; whereupon one of the Brahmans proceeded to cut off his
own mother's head, with the professed view, entertained by
both mother and son, that her spirit, excited by the beating
of a large drum during forty days might haunt, torment, and
pursue to death the taker of their money and those concerned
with him." Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 103.
This kind of worship still maintains a languid existence as
the state religion of China, and it still exists as a portion
of Brahmanism; but in the Vedic religion it is to be seen in
Myths and Myth-Makers |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: order matters so.
"The general! the general!" was now the cry. "Hush! silence! Old
Blood-and-Thunder's going to make a speech."
Even so; for, the cloth being removed, the general's health had
been drunk, amid shouts of applause, and he now stood upon his
feet to thank the company. Ernest saw him. There he was, over the
shoulders of the crowd, from the two glittering epaulets and
embroidered collar upward, beneath the arch of green boughs with
intertwined laurel, and the banner drooping as if to shade his
brow! And there, too, visible in the same glance, through the
vista of the forest, appeared the Great Stone Face! And was
The Snow Image |
