| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: eyes seemed to follow the graces of the eighteenth-century ceiling:
"Look at me well, take my lesson to heart - for it IS a lesson.
Let that good come of it at least that you shudder with your
pitiful impression, and that this may help to keep you straight in
the future. Don't become in your old age what I have in mine - the
depressing, the deplorable illustration of the worship of false
gods!"
"What do you mean by your old age?" the young man asked.
"It has made me old. But I like your youth."
Paul answered nothing - they sat for a minute in silence. They
heard the others going on about the governmental majority. Then
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: you mention, and I find him as fixed as Cheviot. I am truly
sorry my fair cousin should be pressed to give up any of her
maidenly rights. Sir Frederick consents, however, to leave the
castle with me the instant the ceremony is performed, and we will
raise our followers and begin the fray. Thus there is great hope
the bridegroom may be knocked on the head before he and the bride
can meet again, so Bell has a fair chance to be Lady Langley
A TRES BON MARCHE. For the rest, I can only say, that if she can
make up her mind to the alliance at all--it is no time for mere
maiden ceremony--my pretty cousin must needs consent to marry in
haste, or we shall all repent at leisure, or rather have very
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: person, as the author of a philosophy of names, by whose 'prancing steeds'
Socrates in the Cratylus is carried away. He has the conceit and self-
confidence of a Sophist; no doubt that he is right in prosecuting his
father has ever entered into his mind. Like a Sophist too, he is incapable
either of framing a general definition or of following the course of an
argument. His wrong-headedness, one-sidedness, narrowness, positiveness,
are characteristic of his priestly office. His failure to apprehend an
argument may be compared to a similar defect which is observable in the
rhapsode Ion. But he is not a bad man, and he is friendly to Socrates,
whose familiar sign he recognizes with interest. Though unable to follow
him he is very willing to be led by him, and eagerly catches at any
|
