| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: sown in a foreign land becomes denaturalized, and is wont to be overpowered
and to lose itself in the new soil, even so this growth of philosophy,
instead of persisting, degenerates and receives another character. But if
philosophy ever finds in the State that perfection which she herself is,
then will be seen that she is in truth divine, and that all other things,
whether natures of men or institutions, are but human;--and now, I know,
that you are going to ask, What that State is:
No, he said; there you are wrong, for I was going to ask another question--
whether it is the State of which we are the founders and inventors, or some
other?
Yes, I replied, ours in most respects; but you may remember my saying
The Republic |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: a fit of silence and abstraction that he waited the return of the
General. It took place near an hour after the breakfast bell had
rung. He looked fatigued and feverish. His hair, the powdering
and arrangement of which was at this time one of the most
important occupations of a man's whole day, and marked his
fashion as much as in the present time the tying of a cravat, or
the want of one, was dishevelled, uncurled, void of powder, and
dank with dew. His clothes were huddled on with a careless
negligence, remarkable in a military man, whose real or supposed
duties are usually held to include some attention to the toilet;
and his looks were haggard and ghastly in a peculiar degree.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: that this is almost invariably the case. But if we look to varieties
produced under nature, we are immediately involved in hopeless
difficulties; for if two hitherto reputed varieties be found in any degree
sterile together, they are at once ranked by most naturalists as species.
For instance, the blue and red pimpernel, the primrose and cowslip, which
are considered by many of our best botanists as varieties, are said by
Gartner not to be quite fertile when crossed, and he consequently ranks
them as undoubted species. If we thus argue in a circle, the fertility of
all varieties produced under nature will assuredly have to be granted.
If we turn to varieties, produced, or supposed to have been produced, under
domestication, we are still involved in doubt. For when it is stated, for
On the Origin of Species |
