| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: understood - and my hesitation in letting that man swim away from
my ship's side had been a mere sham sentiment, a sort of cowardice.
"It can't be done now till next night," I breathed out. "The ship
is on the off-shore tack and the wind may fail us."
"As long as I know that you understand," he whispered. "But of
course you do. It's a great satisfaction to have got somebody to
understand. You seem to have been there on purpose." And in the
same whisper, as if we two whenever we talked had to say things to
each other which were not fit for the world to hear, he added,
"It's very wonderful." We remained side by side talking in our
secret way - but sometimes silent or just exchanging a whispered
'Twixt Land & Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: interrupts with a remark after the manner of the interlocutor in the
Phaedo, and adds his commentary at the end; Socrates makes a playful
allusion to his money-getting habits. There is the youth Cleinias, the
grandson of Alcibiades, who may be compared with Lysis, Charmides,
Menexenus, and other ingenuous youths out of whose mouths Socrates draws
his own lessons, and to whom he always seems to stand in a kindly and
sympathetic relation. Crito will not believe that Socrates has not
improved or perhaps invented the answers of Cleinias (compare Phaedrus).
The name of the grandson of Alcibiades, who is described as long dead,
(Greek), and who died at the age of forty-four, in the year 404 B.C.,
suggests not only that the intended scene of the Euthydemus could not have
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell: called disinterestedness, a capacity for direct
enjoyment without thought of tomorrow's problems and
difficulties. When people are amused by a joke they
do not need to be persuaded that it will serve some
important purpose. The same kind of direct pleasure
is involved in any genuine appreciation of art.
The struggle for life, the serious work of a trade or
profession, is apt to make people too solemn for
jokes and too pre-occupied for art. The easing of
the struggle, the diminution in the hours of work, and
the lightening of the burden of existence, which would
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