| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard: my father Oro who has lived a thousand years and slept for tens
of thousands, as I have, and he will say the same. It is against
Time that he fights; he who, believing in nothing beyond, will
inherit nothing, as Bastin says; he to whom Time has brought
nothing save a passing, blood-stained greatness, and triumph
ending in darkness and disaster, and hope that will surely suffer
hope's eclipse, and power that must lay down its coronet in
dust."
"And what has it brought to you, Yva, beyond a fair body and a
soul of strength?"
"It has brought a spirit, Humphrey. Between them the body and
When the World Shook |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: the things she told me then: she seemed to keep herself under the
influence of them as if they had the power of narcotics. At the end
of a time like this she turned to me in the door as she was going
and stood silent, as if she could neither go nor stay. I had been
able to make nothing of her that afternoon: she had seemed
preoccupied with the pattern of the carpet which she traced
continually with her riding crop, and finally I, too, had relapsed.
She sat haggard, with the fight forever in her eyes, and the day
seemed to sombre about her in her corner. When she turned in the
door, I looked up with sudden prescience of a crisis.
'Don't jump,' she said, 'it was only to tell you that I have
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Memorabilia by Xenophon: minister of war; they must come to him by gift of nature or through
science. No doubt it is a grand thing also to be a tactician, since
there is all the difference in the world between an army properly
handled in the field and the same in disorder; just as stones and
bricks, woodwork and tiles, tumbled together in a heap are of no use
at all, but arrange them in a certain order--at bottom and atop
materials which will not crumble or rot, such as stones and earthen
tiles, and in the middle between the two put bricks and woodwork, with
an eye to architectural principle,[10] and finally you get a valuable
possession--to wit, a dwelling-place.
[9] A strategos. For the duties and spheres of action of this officer,
The Memorabilia |
