| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: Bartley realized that, whatever else he might
do, he would probably always be known as
the engineer who designed the great Moorlock
Bridge, the longest cantilever in existence.
Yet it was to him the least satisfactory thing
he had ever done. He was cramped in every
way by a niggardly commission, and was
using lighter structural material than he
thought proper. He had vexations enough,
too, with his work at home. He had several
bridges under way in the United States, and
Alexander's Bridge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: over it, and a form like that of mathematics was easily impressed upon it;
the principle of ancient philosophy which is most apparent in it is
scepticism; we must doubt nearly every traditional or received notion, that
we may hold fast one or two. The being of God in a personal or impersonal
form was a mental necessity to the first thinkers of modern times: from
this alone all other ideas could be deduced. There had been an obscure
presentiment of 'cognito, ergo sum' more than 2000 years previously. The
Eleatic notion that being and thought were the same was revived in a new
form by Descartes. But now it gave birth to consciousness and self-
reflection: it awakened the 'ego' in human nature. The mind naked and
abstract has no other certainty but the conviction of its own existence.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: follow sins? I follow virtues also; they differ not by the
thickness of a nail, they are both scythes for the reaping angel of
Death. Evil, for which I live, consists not in action but in
character. The bad man is dear to me; not the bad act, whose
fruits, if we could follow them far enough down the hurtling
cataract of the ages, might yet be found more blessed than those of
the rarest virtues. And it is not because you have killed a
dealer, but because you are Markheim, that I offer to forward your
escape.'
'I will lay my heart open to you,' answered Markheim. 'This crime
on which you find me is my last. On my way to it I have learned
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