| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: these ideas to be pre-existent and our inborn possession--then our souls
must have had a prior existence, but if not, there would be no force in the
argument? There is the same proof that these ideas must have existed
before we were born, as that our souls existed before we were born; and if
not the ideas, then not the souls.
Yes, Socrates; I am convinced that there is precisely the same necessity
for the one as for the other; and the argument retreats successfully to the
position that the existence of the soul before birth cannot be separated
from the existence of the essence of which you speak. For there is nothing
which to my mind is so patent as that beauty, goodness, and the other
notions of which you were just now speaking, have a most real and absolute
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: defines the luxuriant outlines of their figures, lent an arm to
white-haired old men. Young men, with eyes of fire, walked beside
aged crones in holiday array. Then came couples tremulous with
joy, young lovers led thither by curiosity, newly-wedded folk;
children timidly clasping each other by the hand. This throng, so
rich in coloring, in vivid contrasts, laden with flowers,
enameled like a meadow, sent up a soft murmur through the quiet
night. Then the great doors of the church opened.
Late comers who remained without saw afar, through the three
great open doorways, a scene of which the theatrical illusions of
modern opera can give but a faint idea. The vast church was
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: garnish their windows with our particular brand of luminary. We
wore them buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt, and over them,
such was the rigour of the game, a buttoned top-coat. They smelled
noisomely of blistered tin; they never burned aright, though they
would always burn our fingers; their use was naught; the pleasure
of them merely fanciful; and yet a boy with a bull's-eye under his
top-coat asked for nothing more. The fishermen used lanterns about
their boats, and it was from them, I suppose, that we had got the
hint; but theirs were not bull's-eyes, nor did we ever play at
being fishermen. The police carried them at their belts, and we
had plainly copied them in that; yet we did not pretend to be
|
