| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: his quarry. His attention stops on the unusual,
just as does yours; only in his case the unusual is
not the obvious. He has succeeded by long training
in eliminating that. Therefore he sees deer where
you do not. As soon as you can forget the naturally
obvious and construct an artificially obvious, then you
too will see deer.
These animals are strangely invisible to the
untrained eye even when they are standing "in plain
sight." You can look straight at them, and not see
them at all. Then some old woodsman lets you sight
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: praeter se denos ad conloquium adducerent postulavit. Ubi eo ventum est,
Caesar initio orationis sua senatusque in eum beneficia commemoravit, quod
rex appellatus esset a senatu, quod amicus, quod munera amplissime missa;
quam rem et paucis contigisse et pro magnis hominum officiis consuesse
tribui docebat; illum, cum neque aditum neque causam postulandi iustam
haberet, beneficio ac liberalitate sua ac senatus ea praemia consecutum.
Docebat etiam quam veteres quamque iustae causae necessitudinis ipsis cum
Haeduis intercederent, quae senatus consulta quotiens quamque honorifica
in eos facta essent, ut omni tempore totius Galliae principatum Haedui
tenuissent, prius etiam quam nostram amicitiam adpetissent. Populi Romani
hanc esse consuetudinem, ut socios atque amicos non modo sui nihil
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America.
They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators,
politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the
speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is
capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day.
We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth
which t may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. Our
legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of
free trade and of freed, of union, and of rectitude, to a
nation. They have no genius or talent for comparatively
humble questions of taxation and finance, commerce and
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
