| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Anthem by Ayn Rand: warning. And they, these few, fought a
hopeless battle, and they perished with
their banners smeared by their own blood.
And they chose to perish, for they knew.
To them, I send my salute across the centuries,
and my pity.
Theirs is the banner in my hand. And I wish
I had the power to tell them that the despair
of their hearts was not to be final,
and their night was not without hope.
For the battle they lost can never be lost.
Anthem |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: says only that they cannot be explained without a long and laborious
demonstration: 'The teacher will require superhuman ability, and the
learner will be hard of understanding.' But an attempt must be made to
find an answer to them; for, as Socrates and Parmenides both admit, the
denial of abstract ideas is the destruction of the mind. We can easily
imagine that among the Greek schools of philosophy in the fourth century
before Christ a panic might arise from the denial of universals, similar to
that which arose in the last century from Hume's denial of our ideas of
cause and effect. Men do not at first recognize that thought, like
digestion, will go on much the same, notwithstanding any theories which may
be entertained respecting the nature of the process. Parmenides attributes
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: winding between the wooded heights, towards the southern sea; and
imagine for yourselves the feelings of an Englishman as he
contemplates that broad green sloping lawn, on which was decided the
destiny of his native land. Here, right beneath, rode Taillefer up
the slope before them all, singing the song of Roland, tossing his
lance in air and catching it as it fell, with all the Norse
berserker spirit of his ancestors flashing out in him, at the
thought of one fair fight, and then purgatory, or Valhalla--
Taillefer perhaps preferred the latter. Yonder on the left, in that
copse where the red-ochre gully runs, is Sanguelac, the drain of
blood, into which (as the Bayeux tapestry, woven by Matilda's maids,
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