| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: Machiavel. I do not understand you.
Regent. You soon will.--For after this preamble he is of opinion that
without soldiers, without a small army indeed,---I shall always cut a sorry
figure here! We did wrong, he says, to withdraw our troops from the provinces
at the remonstrance of the inhabitants; a garrison, he thinks, which shall
press upon the neck of the burgher, will prevent him, by its weight, from
making any lofty spring.
Machiavel. It would irritate the public mind to the last degree.
Regent. The king thinks, however, do you hear?--he thinks that a clever
general, one who never listens to reason, will be able to deal promptly
with all parties;--people and nobles, citizens and peasants; he therefore
Egmont |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: fire. At such times, and when fire is the agent, those who dwell by rivers
or on the seashore are safer than those who dwell upon high and dry places,
who in their turn are safer when the danger is from water. Now the Nile is
our saviour from fire, and as there is little rain in Egypt, we are not
harmed by water; whereas in other countries, when a deluge comes, the
inhabitants are swept by the rivers into the sea. The memorials which your
own and other nations have once had of the famous actions of mankind perish
in the waters at certain periods; and the rude survivors in the mountains
begin again, knowing nothing of the world before the flood. But in Egypt
the traditions of our own and other lands are by us registered for ever in
our temples. The genealogies which you have recited to us out of your own
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Inaugural Address by John F. Kennedy: All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days.
Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days. . .
nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps
in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
In your hands, my fellow citizens. . .more than mine. . .will rest the
final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded,
each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony
to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered
the call to service surround the globe. Now the trumpet summons us again. . .
not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need. . .not as a call to battle. . .
though embattled we are. . .but a call to bear the burden of a long
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