| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Peter Pan by James M. Barrie: who is that moving? -- eight nine seven, dot and carry seven --
don't speak, my own -- and the pound you lent to that man who came to
the door -- quiet, child -- dot and carry child -- there, you've
done it! -- did I say nine nine seven? yes, I said nine nine
seven; the question is, can we try it for a year on nine nine seven?"
"Of course we can, George," she cried. But she was prejudiced
in Wendy's favour, and he was really the grander character of the
two.
"Remember mumps," he warned her almost threateningly, and off
he went again. "Mumps one pound, that is what I have put down,
but I daresay it will be more like thirty shillings -- don't
Peter Pan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: IV
'There sinks the nebulous star we call the Sun,
If that hypothesis of theirs be sound'
Said Ida; 'let us down and rest;' and we
Down from the lean and wrinkled precipices,
By every coppice-feathered chasm and cleft,
Dropt through the ambrosial gloom to where below
No bigger than a glow-worm shone the tent
Lamp-lit from the inner. Once she leaned on me,
Descending; once or twice she lent her hand,
And blissful palpitations in the blood,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: defeated at every point by Socrates, and is with difficulty induced to
proceed (compare Thrasymachus, Protagoras, Callicles, and others, to whom
the same reluctance is ascribed).
Hippias like Protagoras has common sense on his side, when he argues,
citing passages of the Iliad in support of his view, that Homer intended
Achilles to be the bravest, Odysseus the wisest of the Greeks. But he is
easily overthrown by the superior dialectics of Socrates, who pretends to
show that Achilles is not true to his word, and that no similar
inconsistency is to be found in Odysseus. Hippias replies that Achilles
unintentionally, but Odysseus intentionally, speaks falsehood. But is it
better to do wrong intentionally or unintentionally? Socrates, relying on
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