| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: only interchange hails, but come into still closer, more friendly and
sociable contact. And especially would this seem to be a matter of
course, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport, and whose
captains, officers, and not a few of the men are personally known to
each other; and consequently, have all sorts of dear domestic things
to talk about.
For the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters
on board; at any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers
of a date a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and
thumb-worn files. And in return for that courtesy, the outward-bound
ship would receive the latest whaling intelligence from the
Moby Dick |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: Both stood, like old acquaintance in a trance,
Met far from home, wondering each other's chance.
At last he takes her by the bloodless hand,
And thus begins: 'What uncouth ill event
Hath thee befall'n, that thou dost trembling stand?
Sweet love, what spite hath thy fair colour spent?
Why art thou thus attir'd in discontent?
Unmask, dear dear, this moody heaviness,
And tell thy grief, that we may give redress.'
Three times with sighs she gives her sorrow fire,
Ere once she can discharge one word of woe:
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: have enabled them to correct or verify their anticipations, and their
opportunities of observation were limited. Plato probably did more for
physical science by asserting the supremacy of mathematics than Aristotle
or his disciples by their collections of facts. When the thinkers of
modern times, following Bacon, undervalue or disparage the speculations of
ancient philosophers, they seem wholly to forget the conditions of the
world and of the human mind, under which they carried on their
investigations. When we accuse them of being under the influence of words,
do we suppose that we are altogether free from this illusion? When we
remark that Greek physics soon became stationary or extinct, may we not
observe also that there have been and may be again periods in the history
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