| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: nature, has preferred to bring to the test of ridicule. At first we are
only struck with the broad humour of this 'reductio ad absurdum:' gradually
we perceive that some important questions begin to emerge. Here, as
everywhere else, Plato is making war against the philosophers who put words
in the place of things, who tear arguments to tatters, who deny
predication, and thus make knowledge impossible, to whom ideas and objects
of sense have no fixedness, but are in a state of perpetual oscillation and
transition. Two great truths seem to be indirectly taught through these
fallacies: (1) The uncertainty of language, which allows the same words to
be used in different meanings, or with different degrees of meaning: (2)
The necessary limitation or relative nature of all phenomena. Plato is
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: Minister, a keen-witted man of the world, made a sign to the Duke and
Tullia, and the three disappeared with the first symptoms of
vociferous nonsense which precede the grotesque scenes of an orgy in
its final stage. Coralie and Lucien had been behaving like children
all the evening; as soon as the wine was uppermost in Camusot's head,
they made good their escape down the staircase and sprang into a cab.
Camusot subsided under the table; Matifat, looking round for him,
thought that he had gone home with Coralie, left his guests to smoke,
laugh, and argue, and followed Florine to her room. Daylight surprised
the party, or more accurately, the first dawn of light discovered one
man still able to speak, and Blondet, that intrepid champion, was
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: I wish it to be distinctly understood that it is not I but my
grand-uncle Nicholas, of the Polish landed gentry, Chevalier de
la Legion d'Honneur, &c. &c., who, in his young days, had eaten
the Lithuanian dog.
I wish he had not. The childish horror of the deed clings
absurdly to the grizzled man. I am perfectly helpless against
it. Still if he really had to, let us charitably remember that
he had eaten him on active service, while bearing up bravely
against the greatest military disaster of modern history, and, in
a manner, for the sake of his country. He had eaten him to
appease his hunger no doubt, but also for the sake of an
Some Reminiscences |
