| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: divine agencies, and not in spirits or demigods?
He cannot.
How lucky I am to have extracted that answer, by the assistance of the
court! But then you swear in the indictment that I teach and believe in
divine or spiritual agencies (new or old, no matter for that); at any rate,
I believe in spiritual agencies,--so you say and swear in the affidavit;
and yet if I believe in divine beings, how can I help believing in spirits
or demigods;--must I not? To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume
that your silence gives consent. Now what are spirits or demigods? Are
they not either gods or the sons of gods?
Certainly they are.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: furthest extent (to absurdity, if I may be allowed to say so):
that is a morality of method which one may not repudiate
nowadays--it follows "from its definition," as mathematicians
say. The question is ultimately whether we really recognize the
will as OPERATING, whether we believe in the causality of the
will; if we do so--and fundamentally our belief IN THIS is just
our belief in causality itself--we MUST make the attempt to posit
hypothetically the causality of the will as the only causality.
"Will" can naturally only operate on "will"--and not on "matter"
(not on "nerves," for instance): in short, the hypothesis must be
hazarded, whether will does not operate on will wherever
Beyond Good and Evil |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: consummation of its hopes--a common flower-pot, straight and
stiff, red and ugly. And then it felt that it was not
destined for a king's house, nor for a palace of art, because
it was made without glory or beauty or honour; and it murmured
against the unknown maker, saying, "Why hast thou made me
thus?"
Many days it passed in sullen discontent. Then it was
filled with earth, and something--it knew not what--but
something rough and brown and dead-looking, was thrust into
the middle of the earth and covered over. The clay rebelled
at this new disgrace. "This is the worst of all that has
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