| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon: endeavour on my part to fit both parties. But what of the man who
pleases neither? What in heaven's name are we to call him? Yes! you--
Critias? Under the democracy you were looked upon as the most arrant
hater of the people, and under the aristocracy you have proved
yourself the bitterest foe of everything respectable. Yes! Critias, I
am, and ever have been, a foe of those who think that a democracy
cannot reach perfection until slaves and those who, from poverty,
would sell the city for a drachma, can get their drachma a day.[20]
But not less am I, and ever have been, a pronounced opponent of those
who do not think there can possibly exist a perfect oligarchy until
the State is subjected to the despotism of a few. On the contrary, my
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: outclassed by many of our pursuers. The swifter craft are
seldom equipped with large buoyancy tanks, since the added
bulk of them tends to reduce a vessel's speed.
As many boats were now quite close to us it was inevitable
that we would be quickly overhauled in the shaft, and captured
or killed in short order.
To me there always seems a way to gain the opposite
side of an obstacle. If one cannot pass over it, or below it,
or around it, why then there is but a single alternative left,
and that is to pass through it. I could not get around the
fact that many of these other boats could rise faster than
The Gods of Mars |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: symbol but still joyful; and the reader will find there a
CAPUT MORTUUM of piety, with little indeed of its loveliness,
but with most of its essentials; and these two qualities make
him a wholesome, as his intellectual vigour makes him a
bracing, writer. I should be much of a hound if I lost my
gratitude to Herbert Spencer.
GOETHE'S LIFE, by Lewes, had a great importance for me when
it first fell into my hands - a strange instance of the
partiality of man's good and man's evil. I know no one whom
I less admire than Goethe; he seems a very epitome of the
sins of genius, breaking open the doors of private life, and
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