| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: a glass of grog, wishing the lieutenant luck in getting aboard of
him, fired a broadside, blew some twenty of the lieutenant's men
out of existence, and totally crippled one of his little sloops
for the balance of the fight. After that, and under cover of the
smoke, the pirate and his men boarded the other sloop, and then
followed a fine old-fashioned hand-to-hand conflict betwixt him
and the lieutenant. First they fired their pistols, and then they
took to it with cutlasses--right, left, up and down, cut and
slash--until the lieutenant's cutlass broke short off at the
hilt. Then Blackbeard would have finished him off handsomely,
only up steps one of the lieutenant's men and fetches him a great
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from King James Bible: return unto us they will be upon you.
NEH 4:13 Therefore set I in the lower places behind the wall, and on
the higher places, I even set the people after their families with their
swords, their spears, and their bows.
NEH 4:14 And I looked, and rose up, and said unto the nobles, and to
the rulers, and to the rest of the people, Be not ye afraid of them:
remember the LORD, which is great and terrible, and fight for your
brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses.
NEH 4:15 And it came to pass, when our enemies heard that it was known
unto us, and God had brought their counsel to nought, that we returned
all of us to the wall, every one unto his work.
King James Bible |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: well as any one. 'Then why in this city of Athens, in which men of merit
are always being sought after, is he not at once appointed a general?' Ion
replies that he is a foreigner, and the Athenians and Spartans will not
appoint a foreigner to be their general. 'No, that is not the real reason;
there are many examples to the contrary. But Ion has long been playing
tricks with the argument; like Proteus, he transforms himself into a
variety of shapes, and is at last about to run away in the disguise of a
general. Would he rather be regarded as inspired or dishonest?' Ion, who
has no suspicion of the irony of Socrates, eagerly embraces the alternative
of inspiration.
The Ion, like the other earlier Platonic Dialogues, is a mixture of jest
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