| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: certainly are,--they are mad. For tell me, by heaven, do you not think
that in the city the wise are few, while the foolish, whom you call mad,
are many?
ALCIBIADES: I do.
SOCRATES: But how could we live in safety with so many crazy people?
Should we not long since have paid the penalty at their hands, and have
been struck and beaten and endured every other form of ill-usage which
madmen are wont to inflict? Consider, my dear friend: may it not be quite
otherwise?
ALCIBIADES: Why, Socrates, how is that possible? I must have been
mistaken.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mayflower Compact: at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in the Raigne of our
Sovereigne Lord, King James of England, France, and Ireland,
the eighteenth, and of Scotland, the fiftie-fourth,
Anno. Domini, 1620.
Mr. John Carver Mr. Stephen Hopkins
Mr. William Bradford Digery Priest
Mr. Edward Winslow Thomas Williams
Mr. William Brewster Gilbert Winslow
Isaac Allerton Edmund Margesson
Miles Standish Peter Brown
John Alden Richard Bitteridge
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: it than they can fall in love with a given woman by mere word of
command. Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to the
Subject's range of life. It gives him a new sphere of power.
When the outward battle is lost, and the outer world disowns him,
it redeems and vivifies an interior world which otherwise would
be an empty waste.
If religion is to mean anything definite for us, it seems to me
that we ought to take it as meaning this added dimension of
emotion, this enthusiastic temper of espousal, in regions where
morality strictly so called can at best but bow its head and
acquiesce. It ought to mean nothing short of this new reach of
|
