| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: to shoot beasts with bow or arblast, to halloo to a
hunting-horn, or to spur the horse after game. But
now, at hunting and hawking, and each idle sport
of wood and river, who so prompt as the Templars
in all these fond vanities? They are forbidden to
read, save what their Superior permitted, or listen
to what is read, save such holy things as may be
recited aloud during the hours of refaction; but lo!
their ears are at the command of idle minstrels, and
their eyes study empty romaunts. They were commanded
to extirpate magic and heresy. Lo! they
Ivanhoe |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Case of the Golden Bullet by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: "But the key was in the hole," objected Bauer suddenly.
"Yes, but it was turned so that the lower part of the hole was free.
Johann saw the light streaming through and could look into the room.
If the murderer put the barrel of his pistol to this open part of
the keyhole, the bullet would have to strike exactly where the dead
man sat. There would be no need to take any particular aim."
Muller gazed into space like a seer before whose mental eye a vision
has arisen, and continued in level tones: "Fellner had refused the
duel and the murderer was crazed by his desire for revenge. He came
here to the house, he must have known just how to enter the place,
how to reach the rooms, and he must have known also, that the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: philosophical analysis of language teaches us is, that we should be above
language, making words our servants, and not allowing them to be our
masters.
Plato does not add the further observation, that the etymological meaning
of words is in process of being lost. If at first framed on a principle of
intelligibility, they would gradually cease to be intelligible, like those
of a foreign language, he is willing to admit that they are subject to many
changes, and put on many disguises. He acknowledges that the 'poor
creature' imitation is supplemented by another 'poor creature,'--
convention. But he does not see that 'habit and repute,' and their
relation to other words, are always exercising an influence over them.
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