| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: king, Cyrus, by his valour freed the Persians, who were his countrymen, and
subjected the Medes, who were their lords, and he ruled over the rest of
Asia, as far as Egypt; and after him came his son, who ruled all the
accessible part of Egypt and Libya; the third king was Darius, who extended
the land boundaries of the empire to Scythia, and with his fleet held the
sea and the islands. None presumed to be his equal; the minds of all men
were enthralled by him--so many and mighty and warlike nations had the
power of Persia subdued. Now Darius had a quarrel against us and the
Eretrians, because, as he said, we had conspired against Sardis, and he
sent 500,000 men in transports and vessels of war, and 300 ships, and Datis
as commander, telling him to bring the Eretrians and Athenians to the king,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: lost his wife, should have been poor and unsuccessful and should
have had a second daughter, of a disposition quite different
from Juliana's. It was also indispensable that he should have been
accompanied to Europe by these young ladies and should have established
himself there for the remainder of a struggling, saddened life.
There was a further implication that Miss Bordereau had had in her youth
a perverse and adventurous, albeit a generous and fascinating character,
and that she had passed through some singular vicissitudes.
By what passions had she been ravaged, by what sufferings had
she been blanched, what store of memories had she laid away for
the monotonous future?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: a god--as we have already had occasion to see--whose
worship as a benefactor of mankind attained popularity
in any of the four continents, Europe, Asia, Africa and
America--who was not reported to have been born from a
Virgin, or at least from a mother who owed the Child
not to any earthly father, but to an impregnation from
Heaven. And this seems at first sight all the more
astonishing because the belief in the possibility of such
a thing is so entirely out of the line of our modern thought.
So that while it would seem not unnatural that such a legend
should have, sprung up spontaneously in some odd benighted
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
