| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: we even dropped the Miss and Mister and just used
their plain names without any handle, and it did not
seem unpolite, but just the right thing. Of course, it
wasn't their own names, but names we give them.
There was Mr. Elexander Robinson and Miss Adaline
Robinson, and Colonel Jacob McDougal and Miss
Harryet McDougal, and Judge Jeremiah Butler and
young Bushrod Butler, and these was big chiefs mostly
that wore splendid great turbans and simmeters, and
dressed like the Grand Mogul, and their families. But
as soon as we come to know them good, and like them
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum: and the King followed after them, laughing with delight to find his
orders so readily obeyed.
The Wizard went to General Guph, who was trying to count his fingers,
and told him to follow the Nome King, who was his master. Guph meekly
obeyed, and so all the Nomes quitted the Land of Oz forever.
But there were still the Phanfasms and Whimsies and Growleywogs
standing around in groups, and they were so many that they filled the
gardens and trampled upon the flowers and grass because they did not
know that the tender plants would be injured by their clumsy feet.
But in all other respects they were perfectly harmless and played
together like children or gazed with pleasure upon the pretty sights
The Emerald City of Oz |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: superior to other pleasures, because the philosopher so estimates them; and
he alone has had experience of both kinds. (Compare a similar argument
urged by one of the latest defenders of Utilitarianism, Mill's
Utilitarianism). In the Philebus, Plato, although he regards the enemies
of pleasure with complacency, still further modifies the transcendentalism
of the Phaedo. For he is compelled to confess, rather reluctantly,
perhaps, that some pleasures, i.e. those which have no antecedent pains,
claim a place in the scale of goods.
There have been many reasons why not only Plato but mankind in general have
been unwilling to acknowledge that 'pleasure is the chief good.' Either
they have heard a voice calling to them out of another world; or the life
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