| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: the spirit of philosophy as Euthydemus and Dionysodorus. The Eclectic, the
Syncretist, the Doctrinaire, have been apt to have a bad name both in
ancient and modern times. The persons whom Plato ridicules in the epilogue
to the Euthydemus are of this class. They occupy a border-ground between
philosophy and politics; they keep out of the dangers of politics, and at
the same time use philosophy as a means of serving their own interests.
Plato quaintly describes them as making two good things, philosophy and
politics, a little worse by perverting the objects of both. Men like
Antiphon or Lysias would be types of the class. Out of a regard to the
respectabilities of life, they are disposed to censure the interest which
Socrates takes in the exhibition of the two brothers. They do not
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: "I knew that we were between the two armies, and that they
drew together. I knew we were in danger, and that we could not
stop there and rest!
"Though all these things were in my mind, they were in the
background. They seemed to be affairs beyond our concern.
Chiefly, I was thinking of my lady. An aching distress filled me.
For the first time she had owned herself beaten and had fallen
a-weeping. Behind me I could hear her sobbing, but I would not
turn round to her because I knew she had need of weeping, and had
held herself so far and so long for me. It was well, I thought,
that she would weep and rest and then we would toil on again, for
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: Our experiences had often been hideous in the extreme; the results
of defective reanimation, when lumps of graveyard clay had been
galvanised into morbid, unnatural, and brainless motion by various
modifications of the vital solution.
One thing had uttered a
nerve-shattering scream; another had risen violently, beaten us
both to unconsciousness, and run amuck in a shocking way before
it could be placed behind asylum bars; still another, a loathsome
African monstrosity, had clawed out of its shallow grave and done
a deed -- West had had to shoot that object. We could not get
bodies fresh enough to shew any trace of reason when reanimated,
Herbert West: Reanimator |
